BANCROFT 

LIBRARY 

•> 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


1 


S  P  EE  O 

/  /  y  /  y  t' 

nu- 

OF 


HON.  GEO.  H.  TEAMAN,  - 


Of  Kentucky, 


ON    THE 


iresidenfs  §rfdamati<M, 

rl  FT 


DELIVERED     IN    THE 


HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES, 


BALTIMOKE  .  . .  PRINTED  BY  JOHN  MURPHY  &  Co. 

PUBLISHERS,  BOOKSELLERS,  PRINTERS  AND  STATIONERS, 

M. \K1JI.K    BUILDIN  ,1/riMORK    SniKET. 

1  863. 


SPEECH 


OF 


HON.  GEO.  if  TEAMAN, 

'/ 

Of  Kentucky, 


ON    THE 


DELIVERED    IN    THE 


HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES, 


BALTIMORE  . . .  PRINTED  BY  JOHN  MURPHY  &  Co. 

PUBLISHERS,  BOOKSELLERS,  PRINTERS  AND  STATIONERS, 

BUILDING,  182  BALTIMORE  STREET. 
1863. 


Yt 

X 


•.  Libra? 


SPEECH 


MR.  CHAIRMAN:  I  have  not  sought  to  obtain  the  floor  out  of  any  factious  oppo- 
sition to  the  Administration.  Neither  will  I  offend  its  Iriends  by  that  fierce  advo- 
cacy of  a  system  of  pro-slavery  propagandism  which  has  done  nearly  as  much 
harm  on  this  floor  and  in  the  country  as  the  policy,  or  rather  the  hobby,  of  aboli- 
tion. My  highest  ambition  is  to  appear  here  to-day  as  the  champion  of  my 
country,  and  of  my  country's  Constitution,  which  is  at  once  the  charter  and  the 
bulwark  of  my  country's  liberties. 

Neither  do  I  intend  to  consume  the  time  of  the  House  in  making  a  speech 
against  the  rebellion.  I  have  been  speaking  against  it  for  two  years  in  a  country 
where  it  has  had  many  able  defenders  on  the  stump,  and  now  has  many  brave 
defenders  in  the  field.  The  rebellion  does  not  need  to  be  argued  with  so  much  as 
it  needs  to  be  struck — to  be  struck  such  blows  by  our  armies  as  have  not  yet  been 
dealt  to  it.  The  principal  promises  I  made  to  those  who  sent  me  here  were,  that 
I  would  accept  no  solution  of  our  difficulties  other  than  the  unity  of  the  Republic 
and  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitution  and  laws  of  the  United  States;  that  I  was 
in  favor  of  putting  forth  the  whole  constitutional  power  of  the  Government  to 
effect  this;  that  I  would  vote  all  the  men  and  all  the  money  needed  for  that  pur- 
pose; and  that  I  would  support  this  Administration,  and  the  President  at  the  head 
of  it,  against  whom  we  all  voted,  if  he  would  support  the  Constitution,  and  wage 
an  earnest  and  decent  war,  inside  the  pale  of  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  na- 
tions and  of  humanity,  to  vindicate  the  majesty  of  the  laws.  I  sit  here  day  by 
day  prepared  to  redeem  these  pledges. 

But  there  are  some  things  in  the  land  that  need  to  be  spoken  against;  my  con- 
stituents expect  it  of  me;  and  by  being  spoken  against  now  by  those  who  are 
known  to  be  the  friends  of  the  Government,  it  may  save  to  our  children,  possibly 
to  ourselves  the  trouble  of  fighting  against  them  hereafter.  Well  might  we  dis- 
pense with  our  whole  budget  of  political  resolves,  and  for -them  substitute  the 
nervous  words  of  the  alarm  bell  of  another  assembly  in  other  times,  "  the  republic 
is  in  danger."  Those  to  whom  we  have  committed  the  keeping  of  our  destinies 
will  excuse  me  if  I  say  they  have  laid  themselves  obnoxious  to  the  charge  hurled 
by  Cicero  against  Pompey,  when  he  complained  that  the  decree  of  the  Roman 
Senate — "  let  the  consuls  see  that  no  detriment  comes  to  the  republic  " — had  not 
been  obeyed. 

On  a  former  day  of  this  session  I  had  the  honor  to  submit  to  this  House  the 
following  resolutions : 

"Retained  by  the  Houte  of  Repraentatiw*,  (the  Senate  concurring,)  that  the  Proclamation  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  of  the  22d  of  September,  1862,  is  not  warranted  by  the  Constitution. 

"It  tolcrd.  That  the  policy  of  emancipation,  as  indicated  in  that  proclamation,  is  not  calculated  to  hasten  the 
restoration  of  peace;  \s  not  well  chosen  as  a  war  measure;  and  is  an  assumption  of  power  dangerous  to  the  right* 
of  the  citizen  and  to  the  perpetuity  of  free  government." 


These  resolutions  were  promptly  laid  on  the  table,  and  I  now  desire  to  giv 
some  of  my  reasons  for  offering  them. 

REPUBLICAN   PLATFORM. 

When  the  Republican  party  met  in  convention  at  Chicago,  in  1860,  to  nomi- 
nate a  candidate  for  the  Presidency,  and  to  adopt  and  put  forth  a  platform  of  prin- 
ciples to  recommend  to  the  people,  they  made  one  which,  with  many  faults,  con- 
tained some  good  things.  One  clause  of  the  second  section  affirmed  : 

"That  the  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION,  the  rights  of  the  States,  and  the  UNION  of  the  States,  must  and  shall  be  pre- 
served." 

That  was  a  good  plank  to  put  in  the  platform  of  any  party.  The  fourth  article 
is  all  so  good  that  I  will  quote  it  entirely  : 

"Fourth:  That  the  maintenance  inviolate  of  the  rights  of  the  States,  and  especially  the  right  of  each  State  to 
order  and  control  its  own  domestic  institutions,  according  to  its  own  judgment  exclusively,  is  essential  to  that 
balance  of  power  on  which  the  perfection  and  endurance  of  our  political  faith  depends,  and  we  denounce  the  law- 
less invasion  by  armed  force  of  any  State  or  Territory,  no  matter  under  what  pretext,  as  among  the  gravest  of 
crimes." 

The  party  putting  forth  these  principles  was  successful.  The  President  came 
to  the  administration  of  the  Government  under  the  most  inauspicious  circum- 
stances that  ever  attended  the  inauguration  of  any  other  Chief  Executive  of  the 
Republic.  Secession  had  begun  its  work.  A  political  poison  that  had  lurked  in 
the  system  for  sixty-three  years — I  mean  since  1798 — and  which  had  produced 
strong  eruptive  symptoms  in  1830-32,  had  at  last  become  a  frightful  running  sore, 
and  was  rapidly  dissolving  the  political  and  territorial  integrity  of  the  nation. 

THE  FIRST  POSITION  OF  THE  ADMINISTRATION. 

The  difficulties  and  complications  of  the  situation,  both  political  and  military, 
were  such  that  no  course  the  President  could  have  pursued  would  have  been  free 
from  plausible  criticism,  and  from  the  confident  charge  of  having  sacritied  the  Re- 
public when  a  different  course  would  have  saved  it. 

Much  of  his  conduct  has  been  approved  by  the  loyal  men  in  the  slaveholding 
States,  and  while  they  have  disapproved  much  of  it,  they  have  sometimes  done  so 
with  the  concession  that  there  was  much  to  palliate  and  excuse.  Upon  the  main 
subject  we  now  discuss,  the  subject  matter  of  the  President's  late  proclamation, 
the  country  was  filled  with  hope  by  the  language  of  the  President's  inaugural 
address : 

"  I  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with  the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it 
exists.  I  believe  I  have  no  lawful  right  to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclination  to  do  so." 

The  President  proceeds  to  say  : 

"  There  is  much  controversy  about  the  delivering  up  of  fugitives  from  service  or  labor.  The  clause  I  now  read 
is  as  plainly  written  in  the  Constitution  as  any  other  of  its  provisions:  '  No  person  held  to  service  «>r  labor  in  one 
State,  under  the  laws  thereof,  escaping  into  another,  shall,  in  consequence  of  any  law  or  regulation  therein,  be 
discharged  from  such  service  or  labor,  but  shall  be  delivered  up  on  claim  of  the  party  to  whom  suoli  service  or 
labor  may  be  due.'  It  is  scarcely  questionable  that  this  provision  was  intended  by  those  who  ma'lj  it  for  the  re- 
claiming of  what  we  call  fugitive  slaves:  and  the  intention  of  the  lawgiver  is  the  law.  All  members  of  Congress 
swear  their  support  to  the  whole  Constitution,  to  this  provision  as  much  as  any  other.  To  the  proposition,  then, 
that  slaves,  whose  cases  come  within  the  terms  of  this  clause,  shall  be  delivered  up,  their  oaths  are  unanimous." 


In  his  first  message  the  President  says: 


Lost  there  he  some  uneasiness  in  the  minds  of  candid  men  as  to  what  is  to  be  the  course  of  the  Government 
towards  S'"ith'Tii  States  after  the  rel>Hliou  shall  have  been  suppressed,  the  Executive  deems  it  proper  to  say  it 
will  )>e  his  purpcse  then,  as  ever,  to  be  guided  by  the  Constitution  and  the  laws,  and  that  he  will  probubly  have  no 
different,  understanding  of  the  powers  and  duties  of  the  Federal  Government  rtlatively  to  the  rights  of  the  States 
and  the  people  under  the  Constitution  than  that  expressed  in  the  inauguaral  address." 

Soon  afterwards  the  avowed  policy  of  the  Administration  and  the  true  law  of 
the  case  were  slated  by  Mr.  Seward,  Secretary  of  State,  in  his  official  correspond- 
ence with  Mr.  Dayton,  then  representing  us  abroad  : 

"The  condition  of  slavery  in  the  several  States  will  remain  just  the  same,  whether  it  (the  revohition)  succeed 
or  fail.  There  is  not  even  a  pretext  for  the  complaint  that  the  disaffected  States  are  to  be  conquered  by  the  United 
States  if  the  revoluiton  fail;  for  the  rights  of  the  States  and  the  condition  of  every  human  being  in  them  will  re- 
main subject  to  exactly  the  same  laws  and  forms  of  administration,  whether  the  revolution  shall  succeed  or  fail. 
In  the  one  case  the  States  would  be  federally  connected  with  the  new  confederacy;  in  the  other  they  would,  as 
now,  be  members  of  the  United  States;  but  their  constitution  and  laws,  customs,  habits,  and  institutions,  in  either 
case  will  remain  the  same. 

'•  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  to  this  incontestable  statement,  the  further  fact  that  the  new  President,  as  well 
as  the  citizens  through  whose  suffrages  he  has  come  into  the  administration,  has  always  repudiated  all  designs 
whatever  and  whenever  imputed  to  him  and  them  of  disturbing  the  system  of  slavery  as  it  is  existing  under  the 
Constitution  and  laws. 

"  The  case,  however,  would  not  be  fully  presented  if  I  were  to  omit  to  say  that  any  such  efforts  on  his  part  would 
be  unconstitutional;  and  all  his  actions  in  that  direction  would  be  prevented  by  the  judicial  authority,  even 
though  they  were  assented  to  by  Congress  and  the  people." 

In  February,  1861,  the  Senate  unanimously  passed  a  resolution  introduced  by 
the  Senator  from  Ohio,  (Mr.  SHERMAN  :) 

"R*>.oJrfd,  That  neither  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  nor  the  people  or  governments  of  the  non-slavehold- 
ing  States  have  the  constitutional  right  to  legislate  upon  or  interfere  with  slavery  in  any  of  the  slaveholding  States 
in  the  Union." 

In  July,  1861,  the  resolution  of  my  venerable  colleague,  (Mr.  CRTTTENDEN,) 
passed  both  Houses  of  Congress,  with,  I  believe,  but  two  dissenting  votes  in  each 
House: 

"  That  the  present  deplorable  civil  war  has  been  forced  upon  the  country  by  the  disunionists  of  the  southern 
States  now  in  rtvolt  against  the  constitutional  Government,  and  in  arms  around  the  capital;  that  in  tiiis  national 
emergency  Congress,  banishing  all  feeling  of  mere  passion  or  resentment,  will  recollect  its  duty  to  the  whole  coun- 
try ;  that  this  war  is  not  waged  upon  our  part  in  any  spirit  of  oppression,  nor  for  any  purpose  of  conquest  or  sub- 
jugation, nor  purpose  of  overthrowing  or  interfering  with  the  rights  or  established  institutions  in  those  States,  but 
to  dtfend  and  maintain  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitution,  and  to  preserve  the  Union  with  all  the  dignity  equality, 
and  rights  of  the  several  States  unimpaired  ;  that  as  soon  as  these  objects  are  accomplished  the  war  ought  to 
ceaoe." 

\Vhen  General  Fremont  undertook  to  emancipate  slaves  in  Missouri  by  pro- 
clamation, the  objectionable  part  of  it  was  repudiated  by  the  Administration.  The 
President,  if  he  has  not  been  misunderstood,  said,  in  his  conversations  with  mem- 
bers of  this  House,  especially  as  reported  by  the  gentleman  from  Maryland,  (Mr. 
CRISFIELD)  and  my  colleague  before  me,  (Mr.  MENZIES,)  that  he  had  neither 
power  nor  intention  to  do  the  thing  now  complained  of.  I  quote  the  substance, 
not  the  language.  I  feel  at  liberty  to  do  so,  since  those  gentlemen  did  not  deem 
it  confidential. 

These  things  gave  hope  to  the  country.  I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  he  gave 
hope  to  those  whom  the  other  side  of  this  House  denounce  as  pro  slavery  propa- 
gandists. I  am  not  one  of  them.  But  they  gave  hope  to  the  friends  of  constitu- 
tional liberty  that  the  Constitution  would  be  abided  by.  A  policy  was  announced, 
solemn  promises  were  made;  and  their  virtue  was  not  merely  in  being  a  policy, 
but  that  it  was  a  good  policy  —  not  merely  in  being  good  promises,  but  promises 


6 

that  were  gloriously  worthy  of  being  kept.  I  am  not  making  these  quotations 
with  the  view  to  fasten  inconsistency  upon  the  Administration.  Inconsistency  is 
often  a  small  thing  to  be  proved,  when  that  is  all  of  it.  To  cripple  a  political  ad- 
versary is  a  common  ambition.  I  am  void  of  it  to-day.  I  desire  to  cripple  nobody, 
but  only  to  heal  the  wounds  of  my  country.  Sir,  I  do  not  even  do  it  to  complain 
of  broken  promises,  but  for  the  highef  purpose  of  calling  the  attention  of  the 
country — and  especially  of  the  gentlemen  on  the  other  side  of  this  chamber — to 
the  great  responsibility  and  the  great  danger  that  may  be  and  have  been  incurred 
by  making  such  promises  to  the  ear  and  breaking  them  to  the  hope.  And  I  do  it 
for  another  purpose.  As  the  lawyer  or  the  judge  searches  the  reports  for  authori- 
ties, I  have  the  legitimate  right— one  of  the  rights  of  discussion — to  call  to  my 
assistance  the  great  names,  the  great  influence,  and  the  acknowledged  ability  of 
the  authors  of  these  doctrines,  to  enable  me  to  attack  with  success  the  errors  of 
the  proclamation. 

I  repeat,  that  from  these  things  the  .country  took  cheer;  but  General  Hunter, 
from  whom  better  things  had  been  expected,  issued  his  proclamation  emancipating 
(on  paper)  the  slaves  of  the  three  States  of  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  and  Florida. 
The  President  repudiated  the  proclamation,  but  did  it  with  the  very  ominous 
reservation  to  himself  of  the  right  to  determine  the  legality  of  such  measures,  or 
the  military  necessity  that  might  require  their  adoption.  We  also  remember  that, 
in  the  proposition  for  compensated  emancipation^  soon  after  so  decorously  and,  I 
believe,  so  honestly  made,  and  especially  insisted  upon  with  the  border  State 
members,  he  indicated  there  was. "a  pressure"  upon  him  from  a  designated 
quarter — the  party  who  approved  General  Hunter's  paper  fulmination  of  freedom ; 
that  the  country  could  not  afford  to  lose  the  support  of  those  from  whom  this 
pressure  came;  and  a  friendly  admonition — for  I  have  too  much  respect  for  the 
qualities  of  my  people  and  the  President's  appreciation  of  them  to  call  it  a  threat — 
that  if- this  scheme  were  not  adopted,  worse  might  come.  The  thing  bears  honesty 
upon  the  face  of  it,  yet  it  is  at  once  a  melancholy  and  a  ludicrous  chapter  in  our 
political  history.  The  Chief  Executive  of  the  greatest  Republic  in  the  world 
complaining  of  a  pressure  upon  him  to  do  a  thing  he  did  not  want  to  do — a  thing 
he  had  promised  not  to  do,  and  warning  his  friends  that  he  was  about  to  give  way 
under  this  pressure;  thus  advertising  those  who  were  applying  it  to  redouble  the 
force  of  the  application!  If  he  had  plainly  and  stoutly  said  to  the  pressure  party, 
" Away  with  your  nonsense  and  with  your  malice,  I  will  none  of  it,  I  will  abide 
by  the  Constitution,"  the  agony  would  have  been  quickly  over;  and  if  he  had 
lost  their  support,  which  is  not  at  all  probable,  he  would  have  been  more  than 
compensated  by  the  support  of  those  glorious  majorities  that  have  recently  gone 
against  his  plans. 

THE    PROCLAMATIONS. 

But  an  all-seeing  Providence  has  permitted,  and  a  wilfully  blind  fanaticism  has 
decreed,  a  different  policy.  The  President's  two  proclamations— one  putting  the 
whole  country  under  martial  law  as  to  certain  offences,  and  leaving  it  to  military 
inquisitions  to  determine  those  offences,  and  the  guilt  of  the  offenders,  with  only 
the  vague  and  worse  than  no  definition  of  "disloyal  practices"  to  go  by;  the 
other  declaring, 


"That  on  the,  1st  day  of  January,  in  tho  year  of  our  Lord,  1863,  all  persons  held  as  slaves  in  any  State,  or 
desicunted  part  of  a  State,  the  people  whereof  shall  then  be  in  rebellion  against  the  United  States,  shall  be  then 
then.  of.  rward,  and  forever  free;  and  the  executive  government  of  the  United  States,  including  the  militarx  and 
naval  authority  thereof,  will  recognize  and  nmittfai-  the  freedom  of  such  persons,  and  mill  do  no  aei  o'  acts  to 
fuj'fjren  such  persons,  or  any  of  them,  in  ««y  r/ons  they  may  make  for  their  actual  freedom ;" 

And  offering  to  recommend  to  Congrees  that  loyal  masters  who  may  suffer  by  this 
measure  shall  be  compensated  by  the  General  Government;  but  whether  we 
adopt  that  recommendation  or  not,  the  edict  is  still  to  be  enforced.  The  language 
used  is  ominous.  I  hope  its  selection,  and  remarkable  adaption  to  facts,  were  ac- 
cidental and  not  intentional.  Executive  power  is  an  expression  of  the  Constitu- 
tion— "  Executive  Government  of  the  United  States  "  is  new.  The  Army  and  Navy 
have  not  been  considered  authorities  in  our  system,  but  agencies  subject  to  civil 
authority.  The  declaration  that  there  shall  be  no  acts  done  to  suppress  any  efforts 
the  slaves  may  make  for  actual  freedom  is  chilling. 

If  this  jhing  is  legal,  the  right  of  the  slave  to  freedom  will  become  vested 
instanter  on  the  issual  of  the  next  proclamation  on  the  1st  of  January.  The 
right  to  freedom  being  once  legally  acquired,  can  the  President,  or  Congress,  or 
any  earthly  power,  legally  deprive  him  of  th:it  right?  The  Kentucky  Court  of 
Appeals  would  hold  not.  Then  suppose  that  on  the  1st  of  February  it  is  made 
known  that  by  abandoning  this  scheme  the  Union  can  be  restored,  what  condition 
are  we  in  ?  Of  course  I  would  find  no  difficulty.  But  what  would  those  who 
maintain  the  lawfulness  of  the  measure  do?  Prefer  the  Union  to  the  negro,  or 
the  negro  to  the  Union*?  I  want  an  answer,  and  I  want  it  because  it  would 
throw  some  light  on  the  question — where  are  we  drifting? 

Considering  the  large  number  of  that  race  whose  political  status  is  to  be  thus 
changed,  about  as  numerous  as  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  colonies  at  the  revolu- 
tionary war,  the  estimated  value  of  these  persons  as.property,  ihe  enormous  value 
of  the  products  of  their  labor,  the  intimate  connection  of  that  labor  with  the  agri- 
culture of  one- third,  and  with  the  commerce  two-thirds  of  our  people,  its  connec- 
tions with  business  and  with  credit  in  both  sections  of  the  country,  and  the  sudden 
and  convulsive  change  which-  is  to  come  over  all  these,  we  may  safely  affirm  there 
is  not  a  precedent  like  it  in  the  annals  of  the  world.  History  recites  many  great 
and  beneficent  changes  in  the  relations  between  dominant  and  servient  or  subject 
classes  in  Greece,  in  Russia,  and  in  our  own  mother  England ;  but  none  of  them 
have  ever  been  so  sudden  and  violent  as  it  is  proposed  this  one  shall  be.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  it  is  in  the  power  of  man  to  produce  such  a  one  as  is  now  de- 
manded. Certainly  none  such  can  ever  be  beneficial.  I  have  not  forgotten  the 
exodus  of  Israel  out  of  Egypt  which  was  ordered  and  piloted  by  divine  power 
and  skill  That  was  scarcely  more  than  a  tithe  in  magnitude,  in  comparison  with 
the  change  now  proposed  for  our  country. 

Where  did  the  President  derive  the  power  to  do  this  great  thing?  The  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States  creates  the  office  of  President,  and  vests  in  that  officer 
the  executive  power  of  the  Government.  The  same  instrument  that  creates 
the  office,  confers  upon  the  officer  all  the  powers  he  has.  It  is  as  safe  as  it  is 
true  to  say  he  has  none  outside  of  the  instrument.  He  has  such  as  are  given,  and 
among  those  given  are  none  to  issue  these  proclamations.  I  care  not  for  any  con- 
nection you  may  trace  between  the  proclamations  and  acts  of  Congress.  Con- 
gress had  no  more  power  to  authorize  the  President  to  do  these  things,  than  he 
had  to  do  them  without  any  such  supposed  authority.  Indeed,  the  legislative 


8 

authority  is  not  claimed  in  defence  of  both,  hut  only  of  the  one  establishing  mar- 
tial Jaw,  and  for  this  the  war  power  is  a  much  more  plausible  pretext  than  any- 
thing to  be  found  among  the  powers  of  the  legislative  department.  I  have  asked 
the  question,  and  I  want  it  answered — where  did  the  President  get  this  power? 
The  President  very  lately  denied  the  power,  and  has  not  ventured  to  defend  it  in 
his  message  to  this  House.  The  Secretary  of  State,  with  the  knowledge  and  ap- 
proval of  the  President,  denied  it  in  his  instructions  to  our  foreign  ministers  with 
the  view  of  advising  the  leading  Powers  of  our  deliberately  adopted  policy  on 
this  great  question.  The  Senate  denied  it  in  the  Sherman  resolution;  both  Houses 
of  Congress  denied  it  in  the  Crittenden  resolution ;  and  greater  far  than  this,  than 
these,  than  all,  the  PEOPLE  have  denied  it. 

With  all  this  great  weight  of  authority,  I  yet  scarcely  know  how  to  construct  a 
regular  legal  argument  against  the  validity  of  these  measures.  There  are  some 
things  difficult  to  be  explained,  because  they  need  no  explanation,  they  are  so 
plain  when  looked  at. 

If  I  am  asked  to  prove  the  sun  is  bright  or  the  sky  is  blue,  I  have  only  to  reply, 
look!  If  I  am  asked  to  prove  the  illegality  of  these  measures,  I  can  properly 
answer  by  asking  for  a  clause,  a  sentence  or  a  word  in  the  Constitution  that 
authorizes  them.  I  ask,  "is  it  so  nominated  in  the  bond?"  Will  the  other  side 
of  this  House  venture  to  reply,  "  it  is  not  so  expressed;  but  what  of  that?"  I 
hope  they  will.  We  will  then  have  an  issue  joined  upon  which  we  can  put  our- 
selves upon  the  country  and  demand  a  verdict.  N  « 

A  WAR    MEASURE. 

It  is  very  significant  upon  this  question  that  the  friends  of  these  measures  have 
not  yet  claimed  that  there  is  any  direct  authority  for  them,  but  only  that  they  are 
military  necessities;  that  is,  useful  and  necessary  war  measures.  This  is  aban- 
doning the  Constitution,  and  substituting  in  its  stead  a  Government  whose  only 
source  of  power  is  the  necessity  of  a  given  emergency,  and  one  man  is  judge  of 
the  emergency  and  of  the  measures  necessary  to  meet  it.  Theoretically  it  is  a 
despotism.  If  it  does  not  become  one  in  practice,  we  have  only  to  thank  those 
who  adopt  the  theory  that  their  work  is  not  as  broad  as  their  rule. 

Gentlemen  ought  to  be  careful  how  they  make  precedents  out  of  necessities  and 
war  measures.  They  might  become  a  two-edged  sword.  They  would  cut  North 
as  well  as  South.  It  is  falsely  assumed  that  slavery  is  the  cause  of  the  rebellion. 
This  is  constantly  assumed,  but  never  yet  proven.  The  cause  of  the  rebellion 
was  jealousy — thirsty  ambition.  When  secession  was  a  foregone  conclusion,  the 
conspirators  had  not  the  audacity  to  vote,  in  the  other  end  of  the  Capitol,  that 
they  then  needed  further  protection  to  slavery  in  the  Territories;  and  the  duty  to 
protect,  when  necessary, was  the  distinguishing  feature  of  their  platform.  Mr. 
Yancey,  the  master  spirit  among  them,  said,  in  his  correspondence  with  Lord 
Russell,  contrary  to  the  words  and  the  substance  of  the  alarm  he  cried  at  the 
South  :  "  It  was  from  no  fear  that  the  slaves  would  be  liberated  that  secession  took 
place." 

No,  Mr.  Chairman,  slavery  was  not  the  cause  of  the  rebellion,  but  only  a  hobby 
in  the  hands  of  skillful  conspirators,  who  understood  their  business,  and  did  it 
well.  The  conduct  of  northern  agitators,  and  of  this  Congress  since  the  rebellion 


9  , 

began,  has  given  plausibility  to  the  falsehood.  Slavery  was  not  the  cause  of  the 
rebellion.  This  logic  would  make  all  slaveholders  rebels,  whereas  many  who 
have  suffered  most  for  the  Government,  and  fought  as  well  for  it  on  the  Held  and 
harder  for  it  at  the  polls  than  any  others  are  slaveholders.  Is  the  owner  of  a  slave, 
of  necessity,  the  enemy  of  the  Government  ?  How  was  it,  then,  that  those  who 
participated  most  in  framing  the  Government,  and  most  in  administering  ii  for 
fifty  years  out  of  seventy-five,  were  owners  of  slaves?  The  argument  is  an  ab- 
surdity. It  is  not  the  moving  cause,  but  only  the  hobby  of  the  movers  to  fire  the 
southern  heart,  and  to  precipitate  a  revolution.  Was  there  never  a  rebellion  or 
revolution  in  a  country  where  there  was  no  African  slavery?  And  shall  we 
adopt  the  plan  of  destroying  any  particular  interest  which  happens  to  be  selected 
as  the  theme  of  declamation  and  the  means  of  intrigue  by  bad  men?  We  have 
both  i'alse  premises  and  false  deductions  from  those  premises. 

But  it  is  decreed  that  slavery  shall  be  destroyed,  and  its  destruction  is  called  a 
WAR  MEASURE.  Very  well.  Here  is  a  precedent.  Now,  suppose  New  England 
had  demanded  a  high  protective  tariff  on  cotton  and  leather  goods.  It  is  refused  ; 
and  she  either  secedes  or  attempts  to  collect  the  duties  at  her  own  ports,  and  raises 
an  army  to  maintain  the  position  thus  assumed.  The  Government  sends  an 
army  to  enforce  the  laws.  The  fortunes  of  war  vary.  The  brave  sons  of  the 
granite  hills  and  the  pine  forests  were  not  so  easy  to  conquer  as  had  been  sup- 
posed. And  then  the  President  says  that  as  cotton  and  leather  manufactures  were 
the  cause  of  the  rebellion,  their  destruction  has  become  a  military  necessity  in  the 
suppression  of  the  rebellion,  and  the  imperial  edict  goes  forth  that  on  the  1st  day 
of  January,  1863,  all  cotton  mills  and  boot  and  shoe  factories  in  States  and  parts 
of  States  in  rebellion  shall  be  burned  down.  The  citizens  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  and 
Illinois  might  ask  for  an  exemption  from  railroad  tax.  It  is  refused ;  mobs  resist 
the  assessors  and  collectors;  a  few  regiments  of  militia  are  called  out,  and  the  in- 
surgents beat  them  off.  This  is  civil  war.  The  principle  applies  to  a  small  war 
as  well  as  to  a  large  one,  and  to  one  property  as  well  as  another.  The  States  are 
declared  in  rebellion,  and  the  railroads  the  cause  of  the  rebellion.  Their  destruc- 
tion is  decreed  as  a  military  necessity,  and  on  an  appointed  day  of  vengeance  the 
beds  are  torn  up,  the  ties  burned,  the  rails  crooked,  and  the  depots  demolished. 
A  prominent  citizen  of  New  York  is  seized  and  cast  into  prison  by  a  Federal 
officer;  he  is  released  by  a  State  court  on  habeas  corpus ;  he  is  again  seized  :  the 
State  officers  summon  the  posse  comitatw  to  sustain  and  enforce  the  judgment  of 
the  State  court;  a  conflict  ensues;  of  course  the  New  Yorkers  would  beat  the 
Federals  on  the  first  round,  but  "  the  Cornmander-in-Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
of  the  United  States  "  would  head  them  in  the  end.  He  would  only  have  to 
proclaim  that  as  State  courts  and  State  writs  did  all  the  mischief,  he  would,  on 
New  Year's  day,  or  on  Thanksgiving  day,  or  some  other  good  day,  abolish  the 
whole  catalogue.  Of  course  it  would  be  idle  to  complain  that  your  Circuits,  your 
Quarter  Sessions,  your  Surrogates,  your  Oyer  and  Terminer,  your  Common  Pleas, 
your  Appeals,  and  your  High  Court  of  Errors  were  State  institutions.  The 
President  knew  that,  but  they  were  the  cause  of  a  naughty  rebellion,  and  a  mili- 
tary necessity  required  that  they  should  be  suppressed  as  promptly  as  ever  his 
kind  Kentucky  mother  obliged  him  into  his  good  behaviour  on  the  banks  and 
braes  of  the  bonny  Nolin.  I  would  the  President  could  in  these  feverish  times  go 
take  one  long,  cooling  draught  from  the  stream  of  his  nativity,  and  stroll  one  hour 


I  10 

upon  that  pebbly  shore  where  his  innocent  young  life  first  saw  the  sunlight  of 
heaven  dance  as  if  for  joy  upon  its  bosom,  and  once  more  sit,  the  bright-eyed 
angler,  where  his  childhood  drew  from  those  clear,  deep  pools  the  tinny  tribe  with 
a  purer  and  a  warmer  delight  than  his  manhood  received  the  lightning's  news 
of  his  accession  to  the  Presidency.  His  policy  will  redden  that  stream  with  the 
blood  of  the  friends  and  the  kindred  he  left  behind  him,  until  its  gentle  cascades 
will  sigh  lor  their  sorrow. 

The  illustrations  could  be  multiplied  without  number.  Our  country  is  rich  in 
resources  for  military  necessities.  The  public  lands,  the  jury  system,  the  lakes 
and  rivers,  taxes,  Territories,  negroes,  either  slave  or  free,  could  any  of  theiri, 
if  well  plied,  furnish  an  occasion.  It  is  a  foolish  thing,  Mr.  Chairman,  this  doc- 
trine-of  destroying  vi  et  arnris  the  subject  matter  of  a  controversy,  the  material 
thing  or  interest  about  which  a  rebellion  or  a  war  is  supposed  to  have  originated. 
Under  this  new  rule,  when  we  went  to  war  with  England  in  defence  of  sailors' 
rights,  England  rnight  easily  have  concluded  that  as  she  was  very  much  engaged 
just  then  with  JVapoleon,  it  was  a  military  necessity  that  she  should  end  in  a  sum- 
mary way  the  war  with  her  spirited  cousins  by  hanging  to  the  yard-arm,  all  the 
impressed  seamen  whose  rights  we  claimed  had  been  violated.  And  Washington, 
finding  a  small  speck  of  war  on  his  hands  when  he  sent  out  the  militia  under  a 
good  General  to  suppress  the  Whiskey  Insurrection,  might  have  concluded  that  as 
whiskey  was  the.  cause  of  the  rebellion,  and  whiskey  was  made  in  the  distilleries, 
he  would  destroy  all  the  distilleries,  and  as  whiskey  was  made  of  corn,  he  would 
burn  all  the  corn,  and  for  fear  more  distilleries  would  be  built  and  more  corn 
planted,  he  would  issue  his  proclamation  against  any  such  building  and  planting. 
And  in  doing  this  he  would  not  have  been  much  further-wrong  than  the  radicals 
of  this  day  ;  for,  admitting  slavery  to  be  as  bad  as  you  say,  it  is  yet  no  worse  than 
bad  whiskey. 

The  proclamation  was  a  bad  precedent  to  put  in  the  books,  and  bodes  evil  to  all 
the  country  : 

"  In  these  cases. 

We  still  have  judgment  here ;  that  we  but  tench 
Bloody  instructions,  which,  being  taught,  return 
To  plague  the  investor;  this  even-handed  justice 
Commends  the  ingredients  of  our  poison'd  chalice 
To  our  own  lips." 

The  way  to  suppress  the  rebellion  is  to  whip  the  rebels,  and  to  do  it  well  and 
quickly  ;  but  all  the  time  offer  them  the  whole  protection  of  the  law  which  you 
say  they  have  violated,  and  which  you  'say  you  are  trying  to  enforce.  I  mean,  of 
course,  offer  them  the  protection  of  the  law,  just  as  they  obey  the  law.  What  an 
anomalous  attitude  for  a  nation  to  occupy,  waging  a  tremendous  war  to  execute 
the  law,  (for  that  is  all  that  is  meant  by  the  suppression  of  a  rebellion,)  and  claim- 
ing to  suspend  or  disregard  all  law  while  straining  the  power  of  the  Government 
to  its  utmost  tension  to  enforce  the  same  law  ! 

If  these  measures  were  unconstitutional  when  the  President  and  the  Secretary 
and  the  Senate  said  so,  when  did  they  become  legal?  When  was  the  Constitu- 
tion changed  ?'  Or,  if  it  has  remained  the  same,  when  did  the  light  of  a  new  and 
a  better  construction  pour  like  an  illuminating  flood  upon  the  minds  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  his  advisers?  No,  Mr.  Speaker,  there  has  been  no  change;  there  has 
been  no  new  light.  We  are  only  running  the  way  of  allthe-earth — repeating  the 


11 

blunders  of  nations  in  trouble  and  of  people  enraged.  The  most  attractive  his- 
torian of  modern  times,  in  reciting' how  a  noble  lord  like  to  have  died  of  mortifica- 
tion on  hearing  that  his  son  had  turned  rebel,  and  yet  turned  rebel  himself  in  less 
than  a  fortnight,  says: 

"  In  revolutions  men  lire  fast;  the  experience  of  years  is  crowded  into  honrs;  old  habits  of  thought  and  action 
are  violently  broken;  novelties,  which  at  first  inspired  dread  and  disgust,  become  in  a  few  days  familiar,  endur- 
able, attractive." 

The  profoundest  investigator  of  modern  historians,  in  alluding  to  the  violent 
remedies  adopted  by  Governments  when  assailed  by  powerful  insurrections,  and 
especially  in  regard  to  martial  law,  says : 

"  There  may,  indeed,  be  times  of  pressing  danger,  when  the  conservation  of  all  demands  the  sacrifice  of  the 
legal  rights  of  a  few  :  there  may  be  circumstances  that  not  only  justify,  but  compel,  the  temporary  abandonment 
of  constitutional  forms.  It  has  been  usual  for  all  Governments,  during  actual  rebellion,  to  proclaim  martial 
law,  or  the  suspension  of  civil  jurisdiction."  *  *  *  *  "  But  it  is  of  high  importance  to 
watch  with  extreme  jealousy  the  disposition  toward  which  most  Governments  are  prone— to  introduce  too  soon, 
to  extend  too  far,  to  retain  too  long,  so  perilous  a  remedy."  *  *  *  *  "It  is  an  unhappy  con- 
leqtience  of  all  deviations  from  the  even  course  of  law  that  the  forced  acts  of  overruling  necessity  come  to  bo  dis- 
torted into  precedents  to  servo  the  purposes  of  arbitrary  power." 

Hallam  lived,  studied,  and  wrote  in  a  country  without  a  written  constitution. 
Burke,  who  saw  and  described  more  clearly  than  any  other  philosopher  the  cur- 
rents and  the  breakers,  the  benefits  and  the  calamities,  of  the  great  convulsion  in 
France,  said,  "  We  are  alarmed  into  reflection."  We  have  passed  through  all 
these  stages;  we  have  lived  fast;  we  have  become  accustomed  to  that  which  was 
at  first  dreadful ;  we  have  adopted  too  soon,  and  continued  too  long,  the  violent 
remedies  so  common  in  revolutionary  times ;  and  now,  fortunately  now,  we  are 
alarmed  into  reflection.  The  sober  second  thought  has  overtaken  and  will  save 
us.  Mr.  Chairman,  I  do  not  intend  to  argue  the  unconstitutionality  of  these 
measures  with  the  expectation  of  convincing  those  who  are  predetermined  to 
believe  anything  constitutional  which  will  destroy  an  institution  they  hate,  though 
it  be  recognized  and  protected  in  the  Constitution.  That  were  a  hopeless  task. 
But  there  are  people  in  the  country  who  can  see  the  dangerous  tendency  of  these 
things;  and  to  them,  and  for  them,  I  will  speak.  I  would  admonish  them  to 
consider  at  once  the  source  and  the  cause  of  our  institutions,  and  the  evils  they 
were  intended  to  guard  against. 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  OUR  INSTITUTIONS — ENGLISH  HISTORY  AND  PROCLAMATIONS. 

The  history  of  England  is  the  best  commentary  on  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  That  great  instrument  is  but  the  reduction  to  writing,  with 
some  improvements,  of  the  best  features  of  English  statutes  and  English  cus- 
toms. It  is  the  refined  wisdom  distilled  by  dear  experience  from  the  fierce 
conflict  between  haughty  princes  and  a  hardy,  independent,  and  spiriled  race. 
The  throne  constantly  sought  to  exercise  the  "  kingly  prerogative,"  and  the  people 
as  constantly  contended  for  their  personal  freedom,  their  rights  of  property,  and 
for  the  correction  of  abuses  in  the  administration. 

There  is  but  one  irrepressible  conflict  in  politics,  the  conflict  between  the  agres- 
sions  of  executive  power  and  the  liberty  of  the  citizen.  In  these  conflicts  the  king 
was  always  the  loser,  and  the  barons  or  the  people  always  the  gainers.  The 
prerogative  and  the  power  of  the  crown  were  always  lessened,  and  the  importance 


12 

and  liberty  of  the  citizens  as  constantly  increased.  The  prerogative  as  claimed 
by  the  king  was  generally  exercised  in  the  suspension  of  some  law,  or  declaring 
something  law  that  was  not  Jaw,  or  levying  a  tax  or  a  subsidy  that  the  Parlia- 
ment had  not  granted,  or  in  granting  monopolies  that  were  profitable  to  favorites 
and  oppressive  to  the  masses.  These  things  were  generally  done  by  PROCLAMA- 
TION, or  letters  patent  under  the  great  seal.  The  Commons,  the  great  prototype 
of  this  House,  and  the  people,  the  fathers  of  our  people,  would  respectfully 
address,  humbly  petition,  stoutly  demand,  or  forcibly  resist,  as  the  state  of  the 
quarrel  demanded.  Out  of  these  contests,  including  that  of  the  colonies  with  the 
mother  country,  grew  our  constitution.  Away  back  in  the  dim  twilight  of  British 
history  the  seeds  of  our  system  were  sown.  At  Runnymede  they  germinated, 
and  burst  through  a  stubborn  and  unwilling  soil;  and  from  that  day  up  to  York- 
town  the  plant  has  been  nurtured  by  the  blood,  and  pruned  and  guided  by  the 
arms  of  the  h'rst  race  of  earth.  Those  seeds,  sown  in  the  days  of  the  Edwards, 
the  Henrys,  the  Johns,  the  Jameses,  the  Charleses,  and  the  Georges,  bloomed 
into  strength  and  well-proportioned  fullness  in  1787.  Ah!  sir,  if  we  would  but 
consider  how  costly  were  the  lights  that  Convention  worked  by.  Their  own 
revolution  was  not  the  only  light.  It  was  but  the  last.  Can  any  man  doubt  that 
the  struggles  of  our  British  ancestors  were  the  real  source  whence  our  institutions 
sprung? 

When  the  men  of  1776  and  1787  came  to  form  a  Government  for  themselves 
and  their  posterity,  they  remembered  that  men  in  the  old  country  had  been  legis- 
lated out  of  their  lives  and  out  of  their  estates  without  a  trial,  and  without  a 
chance  to  defend;  that  men  had  been  punished  as  felons  for  doing  that  which 
was  not  a  crime  at  law  when  they  did  it;  that  the  heirs  of  dead  men  had  been 
hounded  and  persecuted  with  these  bills,  and  therefore  they  said: 

"  No  bill  of  attainder  or  ex  postfactn  law  shall  be  passed." 

"Nor  shall  any  person  be  deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without  due  course  of  law." 

The  power  and  the  wisdom  and  the  goodness  of  these  few  simple  words  are 
only  felt  when  it  is  remembered  how  many  had  died  upon  the  scaffold  and  on  the 
block,  how  many  had  begged  upon  the  streets,  and  how  many  had  languished  in 
prison,  because  these  words  had  not  been  written  and  obeyed  sooner.  They  had 
learned  that  the  estates  of  wealthy  men  had  been  a  powerful  incentive  with  needy 
princes  to  have  them  convicted  of  treason  through  the  instrumentality  of  subser- 
vient judges  and  packed  juries;  and  that  at  common  law  it  was  an  incident  of  a 
judgment  and  a  conviction  of  treason  that  the  blood  was  attainted,  and  this  for- 
feited the  estate  of  the  criminal,  and  so  corrupted  his  blood  that  his  children  could 
not  inherit,  cutting  them  off  at  once  from  their  patrimony  and  from  all  motive  to 
love  and  obey  the  Government;  and  that,  in  times  of  angry  political  excitement, 
this  was  sometimes  effected  by  the  more  summary  process  of  bills  of  attainder, 
without  a  trial  at  law. 

They  therefore  declared  not  only  that  no  such  bill  should  be  passed,  but  also  that 

"No  attainder  of  treason  [which  followed  a  judgment  without  a  bill]  should  work  corruption  of  blood,  or  for- 
feiture, except  during  the  life  of  the  'person  attainted." 

They  had  read  much  of  arrests  without  warrants,  of  trials,  convictions,  and 
executions  for  political  offenses,  when  the  accused  was  allowed  neither  witness 


13 

nor  counsel;  of  the  rude  visits  and  unjust  acts  under  writs  of  assistance,  and 
hence  ordained :  . 

"No  person  sliall  be  held  to  answer  for  a  capital  or  otherwise  infamous  crime,  unless  on  a  presentment  or  indict- 
ment of  a  granil  jury,  except  in  cases  arisiug  in  the  land  or  naval  forces,  or  in  the  militia  when  in  actual  service, 
in  time  of  war  or  public  danger." 

That  in  all  criminal  prosecutions  the  accused  should  have  "a speedy  and  public 
trial,"  should  "be  informed  of  the  nature  and  cause  of  the  accusation,"  should 
have  the  benefit  of  counsel  and  compulsory  process  for  witnesses,  that  the  people 
should  "  be  secure  in  their  houses,  persons,  and  papers,"  and  no  writs  should  be 
issued  without  probable  cause,  supported  by  oath,  and  describing  the  thing  or 
person  to  be  seized. 

They  knew  the  history  of  the  licensing  acts,  and  the  censorship  over  the  press 
which  had  survived  the  logic  of  Milton  and  Locke;  they  knew  that  good  men  had 
been  imprisoned  in  the  Tower  for  publishing  the  proceedings  of  Parliament,  and 
said,  "  Congress  shall  make  no  law  abridging  the  freedom  of  speech  or  the  press." 

They  knew  the  history  of  place  bills,  and  the  evils  that  called  for  their  enact- 
ment, and  provided  that  no  man  holding  any  office  under  the  Government  should 
be  a  member  of  either  House  of  Congress.  They  knew  the  hisiory  of  the 
dreary  imprisonments  and  bloody  judicial  murders  that  had  been  offered  up  as  the 
reasonable  service  of  cringing,  time-serving  judges,  who  wore  their  while  wigs 
and  black  gowns,  got  drunk  on  claret,  and  received  bribes  in  the  form  of  presents, 
during  the  pleasure  of  an  exacting  prince,  and  provided  that  our  judges  should 
hold  their  offices  "during  good  behaviour."  They  knew  the  history  of  subsidies, 
of  forced  loans,  of  ship  money,  and  Hampden's  heroism,  and  provided  that  Con- 
gress should  levy  taxes. 

They  knew  the  history  of  the  London  Tower,  and  all  its  long,  damp,  and 
neglected  imprisonments;  they  were  familiar  with  the  history  of  the  "  bloody 
assizes,"  and  with  the  doings  of  the  Star  Chamber,  which  the  historian  has  told 
us  "  possessed  an  unlimited  discretionary  authority  of  lining,  imprisoning,  and 
inflicting  corporal  punishment,  and  whose  jurisdiction  extended  to  all  sorts  of 
offences,  contempts,  and  disorders  that  lay  not  within  the*reach  .of  the  common 
law."  We  are  also  told  that  during  these  evil  times  "the  crown  possessed 
the  lull  legislative  power  by  means  of  proclamations,  which  might  affect  any 
matter,  even  of  the  greatest  importance,  and  which  the  Star  Chamber  took  care  to 
see  more  rigorously  executed  than  the  laws  themselves."  "  The  sovereign  even 
assumed  supreme  and  uncontrolled  authority  over  all  foreign  trade,  and  neither 
allowed  any  person  to  enter  or  depart  the  kingdom,  nor  any  commodiiy  to  be 
exporied  or  imported  without  his  consent."  And  these  proclamations  the  historian 
has  denounced  as  "strong  symptoms  of  absolute  government."  They  knew  the 
cruelty  of  judges  whose  bread  was  earned  by  construing  away  the  lives  of  politi- 
cal opponents,  and  saw  the  splendid  examples  of  moral  and  official  heroism  by 
an  independent  judiciary,  and  provided  that  the  salaries  of  judges  should  not  be 
diminished  during  their  continuance  in  office. 

These  things  are  mentioned  by  way  of  general  illustration  to  show  the  safety, 
aye,  the  necessity,  of  clinging  to  the  Constitution,  and  the  danger  of  going  back 
to  the  days  of  prerogative  and  proclamations. 

The  authors  of  our  written  Constitution  were  familiar  with  the  numerous 


14 

statutes  that  had  been  passed  in  England  to  secure  the  liberty  of  the  citizen  by 
securing  to  him  the  privileges  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  that  great  command  to 
"have  the  body  "  of  an  imprisoned  man  before  an  impartial  judge,  and  said  it 
"  shall  not  be  suspended  unless  when,  in  case  of  rebellion  or  invasion,  the  public 
safety  may  require  it."  It  required  the  most  refined  -torture  of  language,  as  well 
as  wilful  forgetfulness  of  the  historical  origin  of  this  clause,  to  make  it  mean  the 
President  may  suspend  it  without  the  authority  of  Congress.  They  were  familiar 
with  the  thousand  attempts  to  make  treason  out  of  words  and  out  of  thoughts, 
and  the  attempts  to  define  it  and  restrict  it  by  statute;  and  when  they  came  to 
define  it,  they  copied  the  language  and  selected  but  two  of  the  acts  in  the  statute 
of  Edward  III.  They  knew,  how  often  the  Commons  had  been  forced  to  resort 
to  the  expedient  of  cutting  off  supplies  to  control  the  king,  and  provided  that  all 
money  bills  should  originate  in  this  House,  the  most  popular  branch  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. They  knew  that  the  royal  prerogative  had  been  exercised  to  prorogue 
Parliament  when  they  became  troublesome,  and  to  refuse  writs  for  a  new  Parlia- 
ment when  it  was  needed,  and  provided  for  the  biennial  election  of  members  and 
the  annual  meeting  of  Congress.  They  knew  that  upon  the  decline  of  the  feudal 
system  in  Europe — that  system  which  made  every  man  a  soldier  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent— many  princes  ran  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  immense  standing  armies,  and 
they  had  learned  few,  if  any,  examples  of  legislative  assemblies  doing  their  work 
freely,  deliberately,  and  impartially  in  the  presence  of  such  a  power — indeed,  that 
many  of  them  fell  into  desuetude,  and  that  the  Estates  of  France  had  not  met  for 
several  generations.  To  avoid  these  unhappy  results,  they  thought  they  would 
put  the  army  under  the  control  of  the  civil  power,  and  the1  civil  power  under  the 
control  of  the  people. 

The  coin  had  been  debased,  and  James  had  filled  Ireland-with  brass  money; 
and  the  Convention  left  the  coining  of  money  and  the  regulation  of  its  value,  and 
the  regulation  of  weights  and  measures,  to  Congress.  They  had  heard  that 
English  jurors  had  been  dragged  into  the  Star  Chamber,  and  outrageously  fined 
and  indefinitely  imprisoned,  for  presuming  to  bring  in  a  verdict  of  "  not  guilty," 
and  made  a  Government  where  such  things  would  be  impossible  while  it  lasted. 
The  court  of  High  Commission  had  punished  for  religious  opinions  and  religious 
teachings;  there  had  been  Test  Oaths  and  Acts  of  Supremacy  ;  Catholics  had 
persecuted  Protestants,  Protestants  had  persecuted  Catholics,  and  factions  of  each 
had  persecuted  factions  of  their  own  party ;  and  the.  Convention  said  that  we 
should  make  no  law  *«  respecting  an  establishment  of  religion,  or  prohibiting  the' 
free  exercise  thereof,"  and  that  "  no  religious  test  shall  ever  be  required."  Good 
Q,ueen  Bess  had  by  her  proclamations,  banished  the  Baptists  from  her  realm,  and 
Irishmen  into  Ireland  ;  prohibited  the  culture  of  some  vegetables  whose  smell  she 
did  not  like;  prohibited  the  exportation  of  corn,  money,  and  various  other  commo- 
dities from  the  island,  and  prohibited  the  building  of  houses  within  three  miles  of 
London,  for  fear  the  town  would  grow  too  big;  and  prohibited  surplus  apparel  to 
the  ladies.  I  suppose  she  meant  the  length  of  skirts  and  the  size  of  hoops. 
Those  who  built  houses  contrary  to  the  proclamation  were  to  -be  imprisoned,  and 
the  materials  to  be  forfeited.  The  constitutional  historian  says  : 

"  Some  proclamations  in  this  reign  held  'out  menaces  which 'the  common  law  never  conld  have  cx«cuted  on  the 
disobedient." 

Some  of  their  kings  or  queens,  I  forget  which,  issued  a  proclamation  against 
emigration  to  New  England.  This  profound  and  accurate  writer  again  says: 


15 

"The  proclamations  of  Charles's  reign  are  far  more  numerous  than  those  of  his  father..  They  imply  a  preroga- 
tive of  intermeddling  with  all  matters  of  trade,  prohibiting  or  putting  under  restraint  various  articles  and  the 
•home  growth  of  others  or  establishing  regulations  for  manufactures.  Prices  of  several  minor  articles  were  fixed 
by  proclamation,  and  in  one  instance  this  was  extended  to  poultry,  butter,  and  coals." 

So  the  miners  of  Pennsylvania  and  the  good  dairy  women  of  the  Western  Re- 
serve and  Goshen  and  Herkirher,  and  graceful  belles  with  long  trains,  will  see 
that  negroes  are  not  the  only  things  that  can  be  reached  by  proclamations. 

Sir,  what  does  all  this  dry  history  mean  that  I  have  been  quoting?  It  means 
that  we  have  a  constitutional  and  a  limited  Government;  that  there  was  much 
wisdom  manifested  in  making  it ;  that  there  was  much  need  lor  its  being  made; 
and  that  there  is  as  much  need  for  its  being  obeyed  now.  It  is  worthy  of  all  the 
encomiums  that  have  ever  been  passed  on  it;  it  is  not  commonly  remembered 
how  much  it  cost;  and,  in  the  language  of  the  President,  in  his  first  message  to 
the  extra  Congress,  I  would  say  : 

"  Whoever,  in  any  section,  proposes  to  abandon  such  a  Qovernment,  would  do  well  to  consider  in  deference  to 
irhat  principle  he  does  it — what  better  he  is  likely  to  get  in  its  stead — whether  the  substitute  will  give,  or  be  in- 
tended to  give,  so  much  of  good  to  the  people.  There  an  some/ureyhudowingy  on  thi*  subject." 

Ah,  sir,  those  foreshadowings !     I  would  they  were  all  on  one  side. 

The  President,  in  his  last  message  to  this  House,  admits  thai  slaves  are  property, 
and  that  emancipating  them  is  destroying  or  divesting  property.  Then  I  would 
be  pleased  to  be  informed,  if  ne  can  take  my  slave,  by  what  system  of  reason  do 
you  convince  me  he  cannot  take  my  horse  or  my  plow,  or  the  land  I  cultivate 
with  that  horse  and  plow?  I  apprehend  the  only  reason  will  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  there  is  in  this  country  no  great  political  party  who  hate  horses,  plows,  and 
land. 

CHARACTER  OF  OUR  INSTITUTIONS. 

When  the  Convention  of  1787  had  completed  their  work,  and  the  people  had 
ratified  it,  they  had  given  the  government  as  little  power,  and  the  citizen  as  full 
liberty,  as  were  at  all  compatible  with  the  true  relations  that  must  subsist  between 
good  government  and  well  protected  citizens.  The  Government  was  as  mild  as 
it  could  be  and  be  strong  enough  to  perform  the  duty  of  protection.  The  citizen 
was  left  as  free  as  he  could  be  left  and  owe.  allegiance  and  obedience  to  a  good 
Government.  Having  been  born  of  revolution,  our  fathers  felt  the  pains  of  such 
a  political  deliverance,  and  tried  to  frame  a  plan  by  which  their  children  might 
forever  be  saved  the  necessity  of  a  resort  to  force  and  bloodshed.  They  did  this 
by  referring  all  things  to  the  people,  the  source  of  all  power,  by  stated  recurrences 
to  the  ballot-box.  The  plan  is  perfect — all  it  needs  is  following.  How  mild,  how 
beautiful,  how  bloodless,  how  powerful  the  remedy! 

But  the  rebels  forgot  this  feature  in  the  wise  labor  of  our  fathers.  They  went 
to  war  when  voting  was  all  that  was  needed  —and  not  much  of  that,  for  there 
was  little  to  be  complained  of.  And  the  Administration,  in  resisting  this  wicked 
war,  has  forgotten  the  useful  and  bitter  historical  experience  that  culminated  in 
the  American  written  Constitution,  and  in  a  few  months  we  are  carried  back  to 
the  days  of  prerogative  and  proclamations.  There  is  another  thought  in  this  con- 
nection. While  th'is  is  all  sd  wrong,  it  is  not  so  wonderful.  The  ameliorating 
tendency  of  the  conflict  between  the  people  and  the  crown,  in  England,  had  gone 


16 

nearly  as  far  as  it  could  go  with  any  good  effect;  and  the  American  Constitution 
was  putting  in  practice  a  theory  about  governmental  power  and  individual  liberty 
so  nicely  balanced  that  there  was  but  little  margin  left  on  either  side,  and  any 
sudden  change  that  was  also  great  must  necessarily  be  for  the  worse,  by  running 
forward  into  anarchy  or  backward  into  despotism.  Secession,  the  spirit  of  dis- 
integration, does  the  former  at  one  bound,  while  the  Government,  in  its  anxiety 
to  resist  so  great  an  evil,  has  accomplished  the  latter  in  about  three  strides. 

If  the  tendency  of  the  controversies  between  our  race  of  people  and  their  gover- 
nors— for  I  am  considering  the  American  Constitution  as  but  a  vigorous  offshoot 
from  the  great  stock  of  British  experience  and  of  British  constitutional  history — 
had  been  to  moderate  and  limit  executive  power,  and  elevate  the  power  and  im- 
portance of  the  people;  and  if,  in  1787,  that  historical  process  had  fully  ripened 
its  legitimate  fruit,  by  reaching  a  point  beyond  which  good  and  wise  men  would 
not  go,  when  they  had  it  in  their  power  to  go  as  far  as  they  pleased,  it  is  palpable 
that  a  renewal  of  armed  strife  between  citizen  and  government,,  for  which  our  race 
has  been  so  renowned,  can  result  in  but  one  of  two  things:  either  the  process  will 
degenerate  into  a  mobocracy,  or  the  pendulum  will  swing  back  a  few  centuries  to- 
ward absolutism.  An  armed  people,  succeeding  against  such  a  Government, 
would  likely  come  out  of  the  contest  more  a  mob  than  a  Government;  and  such 
a  Government  succeeding  against  a  rebellion  so  powerful  as  this,  would  come  out 
of  the  contest  with  its  powers  enlarged  in  practice  and  precedent,  if  not  in  theory. 
It  is  in  the  nature  of  things.  The  great  blunder,  the  great  crime  of  the  rebellion, 
was  to  inaugurate  such  a  conflict.  Let  our  wisdom  be  to  resist  and  suppress  the 
rebellion,  if  it  be  possible,  without  invoking  the  assistance  of  arbitrary  power.  It 
is  a  selfish  genius,  and  having  rendered  us  the  asked-for  help  in  so  great  a  matter, 
would  surely  claim  the  pleasure  of  ruling  us  for  at  least  a  season  in  return  lor  the 
aid.  If  it  be  said  this  is  an  emergency  not  contempted  by  the  Convention,  I  reply 
that  is  begging  the  argument  and  criticizing  the  Constitution ;  and  I  further  affirm 
the  truth  to  be,  that  nearly  all  the  wrongs  and  oppressions  against  which  the 
framers  tried  to  guard,  were  done  by  government  in  times  of  rebellion,  and  some 
of  them  were  done  by  the  individual  States  on  the  persons  and  property  of  American 
Tories  during  the  revolutionary  war. 

MARTIAL  LAW  AND  ARRESTS. 

Mr.  Chairman,  I  have  directed  the  main  part  of  my  argument  against  the 
emancipation  proclamation.  But  while  I  have  noticed  that  gentleman  from  the 
North,  not  agreeing  with  the  President,  are  sufficiently  earnest  and  sound  upon 
this  question,  they  are  even  more  sensitive  upon  the  subject  of  the  proclamation 
of  martial  law  and  arbitrary  arrests  than  gentlemen  from  the  South.  This  is 
natural,  and  easily  explained.  There  are  two  reasons  w*iy  we  are  less  sensitive 
than  you  :  one  is,  we  have  seen  more  of  it,  which  is  the  bad  reason;  ami  the 
other  is,  we  have  had  more  use  for  it,  which  is  the  good  reason.  You  do  not 
know  so  well  as  we  do  the  stuff  this  rebellion  is  made  of.  You  have  not  lived  in 
communities  half  Union  and  half  rebel,  swarming  with  spies,  emissaries,  horse- 
thieves,  cut-throats,  and,  what  were  far  more  honorable  and  less  dangerous,  re- 
turned rebel  soldiers  beating  up  for  recruits.  You  have  not  lived  in  towns  where 
old  friends  greeted  you  with  a  demoniac  stare  or  an  averted  face,  and  where  you 


17 

could  know  the  news  of  a  disaster  to  our  arms  without  hearing  it  and  without 
reading  it,  except  as  you  read  it  in  the  malignant  gleam  of  an  infernal  smile  that 
lit  up  the  wrinkled  fronts  of  your  enemies.  I  have  quoted  the  Constitution  on 
this  subject,  and  referred  to  its  historical  antecedents.  I  would  have  the  instru- 
ment obeyed  to  the  letter  just  so  long  as  it  can  be  done  without  surrendering 
whole  local  communities  to  the  fierce  power  and  malignant  vengeance  of  local 
conspirators  maddened  with  personal  enmity  to  which  the  power  of  an  invasion 
would  be  a  blessing.  Rather  than  do  this  I  would  fling  away  all  written  law, 
respect  the  law  of  humanity,  resolve  that  society  into  its  original  elements,  meet 
force  with  force,  and  conquer  my  assailant  or  be  destroyed  by  him. 

The  rebel  who  earnestly  believes  in  the  theory  of  secession  has  renounced  all 
government.  Society  or  local  communities  may  sometimes  be  placed  in  such 
sudden  and  dangerous  emergencies  that,  like  an  individual,  they  cannot  tarry  for 
the  forms  and  the  officers  of  law,  but  may  slay  the  assassin  then  and  there.  This 
is  self-defense.  But  the  act  must  be  confined  to  the  occasion  that  calls  for  it,  else 
it  becomes  murder.  If  you  had  seen  an  aged  minister  of  my  church  sleeping 
night  after  night  upon  his  musket,  in  our  company  of  Home  Guards ;  if  you  had 
seen  my  Circuit  Judge  driven  to  bay,  and  forted  in  the  court  house  where  he  had 
practiced  law  and  administered  justice  for  twenty  years,  you  would  better  under- 
stand some  of  the  emergencies  in  which  we  have  been  placed.  We  have  gener- 
ally been  right  in  our  arrests,  because  of  these  emergencies.  You  are  right  in 
your  opposition  to  them  in  your  States,  because  no  such  emergencies  have  existed 
with  you.  What  I  claim  is,  that  such  things  be  confined  to  their  local  and  tem- 
porary necessities,  and  that  in  no  event  can  there  be  any  necessity  for  a  rule  appli- 
cable to  twenty  million  loyal  people,  as  is  the  President's  martial  proclamation. 
And  there  is  this  distinction  to  be  observed :  whenever  men  are  constrained  to 
these  irregularities,  they  necessarily  do  them  as  men  thrown  upon  their  natural 
rights.,  and  not  as  officers  of  a  regular  Government.  The  exception  can  never 
apply  to  large  populations,  or  to  the  operations  of  a  great  Government;  for  then  it 
ceases  to  be  an  exception,  and  the  Government  is  revolutionized.  The  militia  and 
Home  Guards  of  Kentucky  have  made  many  of  these  arrests.  Generally,  we 
were  right;  sometimes  we  were  mistaken,  and  hardships  resulted.  I  never  had 
to  order  an  arrest.  I  had  to  hold  the  men  to  keep  them  from  arresting  half  the 
rebel  population.  The  President  has  come  into  this  House — at  least  his  friends 
have  brought  him  here — and  asked  for  indemnity.  I  voted  against  it.  I  ask  for 
no  indemnity  for  myself  and  my  friends.  We  assumed  the  responsibility  then; 
we  will  take  the  consequences  now.  I  hope  and  believe  the  time  for  these  things 
has  passed.  I  hope  there  will  be  no  more  of  it. 

But  to  return  to  the  Constitution.  Can  Congress  or  the  President,  or  both 
combined,  adopt  such  a  rule  as  this  proclamation  of  martial  law?  The  words 
"  no  person  shall  be  held  to  answer,"  &c.,  embrace  everybody.  The  exceptions 
(e  in  cases  arising  in  the  land  or  naval  forces,  or  in  the  militia  when  in  actual  ser- 
sice,"  evidently  mean  offences  committed  by  persons  engaged  in  such  service,  and 
against  the  rules  and  articles  adopted  for  the  government  of  those  arms  of  the  ser- 
vice, and  for  which  they  may  be  held  to  answer  under  the  Articles  of  War.  But 
to  hold  that  this  language  means  any  cases  which  the  President  may  direct,  shall 
be  punished  by  the  land  and  naval  forces,  is  an  outrage  upon  the  plain  English  of 
the  thing.  After  providing  all  these  safeguards,  and  being  at  so  much  pains  to 


18 

limit  and  define  treason,  what  would  the  fathers  have  .thought  if  they  had  been 
told  that  their  sons  not  in  the  land  or  naval  service  would  be  tried  and  punished 
under  a  military  commission  for  "disloyal  practices?'7  What  are  disloyal  prac- 
tices ?  What  Constitution,  statute,  or  decision  defines  them,  so  that  the  defendant 
will  know  how  to  answer?  Is  it  using  rebel  arguments,  expressing  rebel  sym- 
pathies, telling  rebel  lies?  There  must  be  something  short -of  levying  war  or 
giving  aid  and  comfort  that  will  amount  to  disloyal  practices,  else  the  old  words 
•would  have  been  used  and  would  have  answered.  If  anything  short  of  the  defini- 
tion of  treason  will  make  out  a  case  of  "  practice,"  how  much  short  may  you  come  ? 
Are  we  not  going  back  to.  the  days  when  the  Commons  ielt  bound  to  petition  Ed- 
ward III  to  define  treason,  and  which  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  statute  bearing 
his  name?  I  repeat  the  question,  what  are  disloyal  practices?  The  Constitution 
is  silent.  The  military  commission  will  determine.  I  humbly  beg  them  they 
will  not  determine  that  my  speech  against  the  danger  of  using  the  term  was  itself 
a  disloyal  practice.  What  is  the  punishment  for  disloyal  practices?  The  law  is 
silertt.  The  commission  will  determine;  and  the  -offender  will  learn  to  his  satis- 
faction when  he  hears  the  rattle  of  a  platoon  of  muskets.  I  am  not  defending  the 
bad  men  whom  the  proclamation  would  catch,  but  only  the  good  men  whom  it 
would  oppress.  If  I  and  my  neighbors  choose  to  object  to  the  forcible  emancipa- 
tion of  four  million  slaves,  I  do  not  want,  us  dragged  next  day  before  a  military 
commission^- 

"Brest  in  a  little  brief  authority,"    *    *    * 
"  With  eye  severe,  and 'beard  of  formal  cut." 

WAR    POWER.       ;«*; 

But  we  are*  told  that  these  measures  come  within  the  WAR  POWER  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. I  have  to  reply,  that  if  they  did,  the  -power  of  making  war  is  vested  in 
Congress.  But  we  are  told  that  the  Constitution  furnishes  to  its  Administrators 
two  sets  of  powers — one  for  war  and  one  for  peace.  Granting  this,  does  it  help 
the  argument?  It  is  a  platitude  that  means  nothing  and  proves  nothing,  for  the 
question  still  remains,  what  is  this  war' power?  Where  does  it  cprne  from? 
What  is  its  nature  and  extent?  '  Does  it  come  from  the  Constitution,  or  outside 
the  Constitution  ?  Some  are  so  frank  as  to  admit  that  they  rely  on  the  war  power 
of  sovereign,  nations  as  it  exists  now,  and  as  it  existed  and  was  understood  before 
the  adoption  of  our  Constitution,  under  the  international  code.  .  1  admit  this  view 
of  the  war  power  as  it  affects  or  controls  the  exercise  of  that  power  against  foreign 
nations;  and  that  when  Congress  has  declared  war,  the  President,  as  Commander- 
in-Chief,  and  his  generals  in  the  field,  are  to  be  governed  by  this  code- in  the  con- 
duct of  the  war.  But  is  not  this  dangerous  ground?  Is  it  not  admitting  too 
much?  Whether  it  would  only  be  treating  the  rebels  as  belligerents,  or  recogniz- 
ing them  as  a  nation,  I  will  not  stop  to  inquire.  But  this  is  no  foreign  War.  We 
all  claim  that  the  enemy  is  not  a  foreign  or  an  independent  nation,  but  only  large 
masses  of  our  own  citizens  engaged  in  a  wicked  rebellion.  The  argument  on 
this  score  fails.  Indeed,  I  doubt  very  much  whether  this  is  a  war  at  all  in  the 
sense  in  which  the  Constitution  uses  that  word,  except  in  the  one  expression  of 
"levying  war."  It  has  already  been  decided  by  Federal  judges  that  the  word 
"  enemies,"  in  the  clause  "  adhering  to  their  enemies,  giving  .them  aid  and  com- 
fort," means  just  what  it  did  in  the  old  statute  from  which  it  was  copied — foreign 
enemies,  and  not  domestic  traitors. 


19 

This  is  a  gigantic  effort  of  the  nation,  by  the  use  of  the  nation's  strength,  to  en- 
force the  nation's  laws  against  citizens  of  the  nation,  in .  rebellion  against  those 
laws.  The  conduct  of  these  citizens  brings  them  within  the  exact  definition  of 
the  crime  of  treason  as  given  by  the  Constitution,  and  the  war  is  an  attempt  to 
arrest  or  disperse  them  as  traitors.  The  President  has  called  out  the  posse  comita- 
tus  of  the  nation  to  assist  him;  and  if  rebels  are  killed  in  his  attempt  to  arrest  them 
and  to  enforce  the  law,  it  is  their  own  fault.  If,  when  they  are  arrested,  they  are 
not  tried  and  executed  as  traitors,  but  are  held  arid  treated  and  exchanged  as  pri- 
soners of  war,  they  owe  their  escape,  not  to  the  letter  of  the  law,  but  to  an  enlarged 
and  enlightened  policy,  a  uniform  rule  that  has  sprung  from  the  custom  of  all  na- 
tions, republican  and  monarchical,  not  to  punish  immense  masses  as  you  would 
one  man,  but  to  conform  the  conduct  of  the  strife  to  the  principles  and  policy  of 
that  general  amnesty  which  all  nations  are  sure  to  grant  at  the  end  of  such  a  war. 
It  may  be  retorted  that  by  admitting  that  all  these  armed  rebels  are  traitors,  and 
capitally  punishable  under  the  law,  and  yet  insisting  that  when  captured  they 
ought  not  to  be  hanged  as  such,  but  to  be  treated  and  exchanged  as  prisoners  of 
war,  as  the  Government  really  does,  we  have  admitted  that  a  case  has  arisen 
•where  the  law  and  the  Constitution  ought  to  be  neglected  or  violated.  Not  at  all. 
The  pardoning  power  is  in  the  President,  and  he  might,  I  apprehend,  if  a  prosecu- 
tion were  pending,  enter  a  nolle  prosequi  through  his  attorney  at  the  bar. 

Then  I  claim  that,  in  waging  this  war,  the  President  has  all  the  power  the  Con- 
stitution gives  him,  and  no  more.  •  I  go  further,  and  claim  that  the  Constitution 
gives  more  power — call  it  peace  power  or  war  power — over  a  domestic  rebel  than 
does  the  law  of  nations,  and  gives  more  power  over  a  domestic  rebel  than  it  and 
the  law  of  nations  combiped  give  over  a  foreign  enemy.  Gentlemen  do  not  gain 
anything  by  adding  the  war  poweT  of  nations  to  the  written  and  expressed  power 
of  the  Constitution.  That  instrument  gives  ample  power  to  suppress  a  rebellion, 
to  enforce  the  laws,  and  to  punish  capitally  the  rebels  who  resist  the  law.  Not  so 
under  Hie  war  power  as  derived  from  i he  law  of  nations.  You  have  the  right  to 
kill  your  enemy  on  the  battle-field,  but  no  right  to  hang  him  when  you  have 
caught  him.  Under  the  Constitution  you  may  confiscate  the  property  of  a  rebel 
for  the  term  of  his  life;  under  the  international  code,  you  cannot  take  the  private 
property  of  alien  enemies  on  land,  though  they  be  soldiers  and  officers  taken  in 
acts  of  national  hostility.  Then  applying  the  rules  of  international  law  to  this 
emancipation  proclamation,  and  it  is  unauthorized;  because  it  destroys  at  least 
$1,000,000,000  of  private  property,  and  does  this  as  a  war  measure,  without  trial 
or  office  found.  Sir,  without  stopping  to  give  authorities,  without  referring  to  the 
book  'and  the  page  of  Kent,  Wheaton,  Vattel,  Grotius,  Puffendorf,  Bynkershoek, 
and  Montesquieu,  I  affirm  ti.::t  the  rule  adduced  from  these  great  writers,  and  the 
rule  adduced  from  the  modern  customs  of  civilized  and  Christian  nations,  is  that 
you  cannot  destory  private  property  on  land.  You  can  seize  it,  and  even  destroy 
it,  when  it  has  had  a  public  and  hostile  character  imparted  to  it  by  being  used  in 
the  war  against  you.  The  exceptions  to  the  rule  I  have  laid  down  are  caused  by 
present,  urgent,  and  overriding  necessity — such  necessity  as  appertains  to  the 
immediate  conduct  of  a  battle  or  a  campaign,  as  when  Washington  destroyed  a 
house  that  his  batteries  might  play  fairly  on  Yorktown:  It  is  in  the  same  sense 
that  on  certain  occasions  a  general  would  be  either  a  fool  or  a  traitor  to  send  for  a 
justice  to  issue  a  warrant  antf  a  constable  to  execute  it;  or,  having  dispensed  with 


20 

their  assistance,  would  allow  the  nearest  judge  to  take  his  prisoner  from  him  under 
habeas  corpus,  and  send  him  over  to  the  enemy  with  maps  or  secret  information. 
The  cases  are  easily  distinguished.  It  is  only  hatred,  or  the  love  of  power,  that 
will  magnify  the  exception  into  a  rule  of  law. 

What  I  affirm  is,  that  it  is  impossible  that  the  exception  to  the  rule,  in  the  form 
of  necessity,  should  ever  embrace  so  vast  an  amount  of  property,  scattered  over  so 
vast  a  territory  as  the  slaves  in  eleven  States,  owned  promiscuously  by  rebels  and 
loyal  men  ;  or  that  it  can  embrace  twenty  million  free  people  in  twenty-two  loyal 
States.  I  repeat,  sir,  there  is  nothing  gained  in  the  way  of  power  by  casting  away 
the  Constitution  and  taking  up  the  laws  of  nations. 

MILITARY   NECESSITY. 

It  is  constantly  urged,  not  only  that  necessity  is  one  of  the  rules  of  war,  but 
that  the  destruction  of  slavery  has  become  a  necessity  for  the  suppression  of  this 
rebellion.  This  is  more  honest  and  more  definite.  It  is  coming  to  the  point. 
I  will  not  argue  the  fact  of  the  necessity,  but  only  give  rny  opinion  that  if  the 
rebellion  cannot  be  suppressed  without  this,  it  cannot  be  done  with  it. 

I  only  desire  to  call  the  attention  of  the 'country  to  this  doctrine  of  war  power 
derived  from  necessity.  As  I  understand  the  doctrine,  it  is  this :  In  a  state  of  war;, 
foreign  or  civil,  the  "war  power  "  may  do  what  is  necessary  to  overcome  the 
enemy.  The  President,  then,  the  Commander-in-Chief,  gets  his  power  not  so 
much  from  the  Constitution,  which  he  swears  to  support,  as  from  the  war  power  j 
and  the  power  thus  derived  is  measured  not  so  much  by  any  written  rule  as  by 
the  necessity  of  the  particular  emergency;  and  the  emergency  and  necessity,  and 
>Ke  fitness  of  the  remedy  proposed,  are  all  determined  by  him. 

Then  it  has  come  to  this,  that  our  Constitution  is  a  system  of  government  for 
the  piping  times  of  peace,  but  in  the  midst  of  arms  all  its  laws  are  silent.  It  has 
come  to  this,  that  it  is  a  good  law  as  long  as  it  is  obeyed,  but  no  law  at  alj^vhen 
violated  by  a  traitor.  The  first  rude  blast,  or  even  a  small  speck  of  war,  suspends 
the  Constitution,  and  substitutes  a  higher  law,  the  law  of  necessity — one  man 
being  the  judge  of  the  occasion,  the  necessity,  and  of  the  measure  of  harshness  or 
destruction  demanded.  Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  the  proposition,  I  like  its 
plainness.  I  like  to  deal  with  an  adversary  whom  I  can  understand.  He  gives 
us  a  despotism  instead  of  a  regular  and  limited  government.  There  is  no  escaping 
the  conclusion.  Surely  it  does  not  require  any  argument  to  prove  that  this  prin- 
ciple is  as  dangerous  to  one  section  as  to  another.  I  am  not  resisting  it  for  the 
harm  it  would  L!O  the  plotters  and  doers  of  treason.  Morally,  they  deserve  almost 
anything  that  can  be  inflicted.  But  I  resist  it  for  myself,  for  my  children,  and  for 
the  loyal  people  of  my  country.  The  advocates  of  this  higher  law  theory  are  as 
much  rebels  against  the  Constitution  as  the  Southern  secessionists.  The  only 
difference  between  them  is  that  the  Southern  rebel  had  the  pluck  to  take  up  arms 
in  defence  of  his  folly  and  wickedness,  while  the  Northern  rebel  is  defending  his 
in  his  stump  speeches,  his  editorials,  his  sermons,  his  prayers,  and  his  votes  in 
Congress.  While  he  is  "singing  psalms  through  his  nose,"  his  Southern  ally  is 
sleeping  in  a  swamp,  scaling  a  mountain  to  the  tune  of  the  Marseillaise,  or  dying 
in  the  last  ditch. 

When  the  Tories,  under  James,  persecuted  the  Whigs,  the  Whigs  complained 


21 

bitterly  of  arrests  without  warrant,  that  they  could  get  no  copy  of  an  indictment, 
th.it  they  were  not  allowed  counsel  and  sworn  witnesses,  that  they  were  imprisoned 
without  a  known  cause,  and  kept  long  in  prison  without  a  trial.  The  Tories  an- 
swered, "necessity  and  public  danger."  When  James  fled  the  realm,  and 
Wiilicfm  of  Orange  ascended  the  throne,  the  tables  were  turned.  The  Jacobites 
an>!  Tories  constantly  intrigued  for  a  restoration,  and  they  in  turn  were  found 
complaining  of  imprisonment  without  writs  and  without  overt  acts,  that  they 
conk!  get  no  specifications,  and  were  allowed  no  trial.  The  Whigs  rather  felt  the 
force  of  the  complaint,  but  often  replied,  "  necessity  and  public  danger." 

And  so  it  has  ever  gone.  The  fault  is  in  human  nature,  and  Governments  are 
to  control  human  nature.  There  is  much  may  be  said  in  favor  of  the  arrest,  the 
banishment,  and  even  the  destruction  of  an  unprincipled  conspirator,  against  whom 
little  or  nothing  overt  can  be  proved,  and  yet  who,  as  everybody  knows,  is  plotting 
for  the  destruction  of  the  Government  whose  protection  he  is  receiving.  The 
danger  is,  that  if  these  things  are  not  done  according  to  rule — in  our  case  the 
Constitution — the  necessity  will  always  be  found  on  the  side  of  the  ins.  and  the 
hardships  and  mistakes  on  the  side  of  the  outs.  Can  we  not  rise  above  the  jeal- 
ousies and  the  hatreds  of  the  hour,  the  more  animal  part  of  human  nature,  and 
lift  ourselves  to  that  elevation  of  view  where  there  is  a  clearer  air  and  a  wider 
range — where  we  can  see  the  faults  of  ourselves  as  well  as  the  sins  of  the  rebels? 
We  are  struggling  with  contending  currents ;  we  are  in  the  fog,  and  we  are  fretted. 
From  the  neighboring  heights  we  can  see  where  the  one  will  lead  us,  into  a  placid 
harbor,  laden  with  the  prosperity  of  a  thousand  interests,  and  girt  round  with  the 
granite  walls  of  the  Constitution,  where  the  breath  of  storm  ca*n  never  light;  the 
ot  i  r,  into  the  maelstrom  of  anarchy  and  violence,  whose  vortex  we  can  only 
escape  by  fleeing  to  the  dead  sea  of  despotism,  and  anchoring  ourselves  firmly, 
submissively,  forever  upon  its  stagnant  and  fetid  bosom. 

A  BAD    POLICY. 

Waiving  the  question  of  constitutionality,  the  proclamation  of  emancipation 
was  an  impolitic,  an  unwise,  and  a  frightfully  unfortunate  measure.  It  consoli- 
dates the  people  of  the  Southern  States  and  makes  a  unity  of  them,  and  imparts 
to  them  the  energy  of  despair,  with  a  show  of  justice  in  the  eyes  of  the  world 
they  never  had  before.  In  the  beginning,  they  raised  the  false  cry  that  they  were 
striking  for  their  homes  and  firesides.  Shall  we  make  that  true  which  was  false? 
Many  Union  men,  who  had  firmly  resisted  the  tide  of  events  and  of  public  opinion 
up  to  that  time,  gave  way  and  succumbed.  Some  of  the  most  melancholy  in- 
stances of  this  have  occurred  in  East  Tennessee  among  the  most  loyal,  the  most 
neglected,  and  the  most  oppressed  people  on  this  continent.  It  confounds  and 
embarrasses  Union  men  in  the  border  and  Western  States.  They  had  a  thousand 
times  argued,  nay,  some  of  them  had  promised  no  such  radicalism  would  be 
adopted  by  the  Administration;  and  cited  the  inaugural,  and  the  messages,  the 
Sherman  and  the  Crittenden  resolutions,  in  proof  of  their  position.  Oh  !  sir,  could 
members  only  see  the  cruel  advantage  that  proclamation  gave  the  rebels  and  rebel 
sympathisers  over  the  friends  of  the  Union  in  .my  country,  they  would  go  in  a 
body  and  demand  of  the  President — who  they  claim  is  a  good  man — that  he  recant 
the  unfortunate  order.  Considering  it  only  as  a  war  measure,  it  is  not  merely  a 


22 

paper  wad.  It  is  more.  It  is  a  blunder  and  an  injustice  that  injures  only  the 
friends  of  the  Government.  We  had  worked  manfully  against  the  tempest, 
but  now — 

"  You  mar  our  labor, . 
You  do  assist  the  storm."  fc 

How  is  this  proclamation  to  be  enforced?  It  cannot  be  enforced  in  a  given 
State  or  district  until  our  arms  have  possession  of  the  country.  And  when  we 
have  acquired  possession  and  control  of  a  given  district  of  country  so  that  we  can 
enforce  the  laws,  that  is  all  you  want,  without  the  proclamation..,  if  you  were 
honest  in  passing  the  Crittenden  resolution,  the  best  penned  resolution  that  appears 
on  the  record  of  our  political  history.  It  is  equally  useless,  premature,  and  even 
dangerous,  where  we  have  no  possession  and  no  control. 

"The  man  that  once  did  sell  the  lion's  skin 
•l  ./*'  While  the  beast  yet  lived,  was  killed  with  hunting  him." 

What  use,  then,  is  intended  to  be  made  of  the  proclamation  ?  Is  it  the  policy 
of  him  who  ought  to  be  the  political  saviour  as  well  as  the  President  of  the  Re- 
public to  make  the  negro  his  apostle,  to  go  before  him  crying  aloud  in  the  South, 
baptizing  the  country  in  blood'and  fire  to  preach  the  coming  of  his  great  salvation  ? 
Considered  in  the  light  of  a  threat,  it  is  a  poor  compliment  to  the  hereditary  spirit 
of  the  races  from  which  we  are  all  sprung,  to  the  blood  that  courses  through  all 
our  veins. 

SERVILE    INSURRECTION. 

But,  Mr.  Chairman,  the  most  cruel  and  alarminfg  and  abhorrent  feature  of  this 
thing  is  the  servile  insurrection  and  war  that  must  follow  the  attempts  to  enforce 
it.  We  are  told  there  is  no  invitation  to  the  negroes  to  do  this.  In  terms  there  is 
not,  practically  there  is  in  the  offer  of  freedom,  and  in  the  promise  that  nothing 
shall  be  done  to  resist  their  assertion  of  that  freedom.  Others,  say  it  is  not  meant  that 
way,  and  need  not  and  will  not  result  that  way ;  that  it  is  simply  freeing  a  certain 
class  without  telling  them  to  do  murder.  Mr.  Chairman,  is  it  intended  to  add  in- 
sult to  injury?  Are  we  to  be  mocked  at  in  this  way?  To  be-  told  that  such  a 
measure  as  this,  offering  sudden  emancipation  to  such  a  class,  against  the  preju- 
dices and  the  admitted  legal  rights  of  such  spirits  as  Southern  rebels  and  Southern 
planters,  will  not  lead  to  bloodshed  of  the  most  revolting  character  known  to  the 
history  of  the  world  !  Others  more  honest,  or  perhaps  orily  more  impudent  and 
devilish,  tell  us  plumply  :  "of  course  there  will  be  insurrection  and  servile  war; 
but  whose  fault  is  it?  Did  not  the  rebels  bring  on  the  war,  and  is  not  servile  in- 
surrection an  incident  of  such  a  war;  and  have  we  not  a  right  to  ask  all  human 
beings  to  assist  us  in  suppressing  such  a  rebellion?"  Great  God!  has  it  come  to 
this  ?  Could  I  call  up  the  spirit  of  a  Chatham  to  this  floor,  or  borrow  the  power 
of  the  living  orator  to  hurl  only  one  thunderbolt  at  this'great  iniquity  !  When  our 
fathers  severed  the  ties  that  bound  them  to  the  mother  country,  they  stated,  as  one 
of  their  complaints,  that  the  king  had  "  endeavored  to  bring  on  the  inhabitants  of 
our  frontiers  the  merciless  Indian  savages,  whose  known  rule  of  warfare  is  an 
undistinguished  destruction  of  all  ages,  sexes  and  conditions."  And  now,  our 
Government  invokes  the  assistance  of  more  than  three  millions  of  beings  who,  the 
friends  of  the  measure  have  long  been  telling  us,  are  made  barbarous  and  revenge- 
ful by  a  long  course  of  oppression,  and  whose  .modes  of  War,  as  far  as  we  can 


23 

lenrn  from  Africa  and  the  Indies,  are  as  much  worse  than  the  red  man's  as  the  red 
m;m's  is  worse  than  the  white  man's.  What  will  the  world  think?  What  will 
be  the  "opinion  of  mankind,"  lor  which  we  ought  alivays  to  have  a  "decent 
respect,"  when  they  .compare  the  complaints  of  our  fathers  with  the  conduct  of 
their  children,  especially  when  they  remember  that  the  rebels  inherited  their  much, 
hated  property  from  their  fathers,  who  bought  it  in  large  part  from  your  fathers, 
and  paid  them  in  gold  and  silver  and  tobacco,  the  three  circulating  mediums  and 
legal  tenders  of  that  day.  Are  gentlemen  so  bent  on  a  given  policy  towary 
slavery,  and  so  maddened  by  hatred  to  slave  owners,  that  they  will  go  any  lengths, 
regardless  even  of  the  friends  of  the  Government  in  the  doomed  districts?  Think 
of  those  friends.  Remember  that  the  weeds  and  the  flowers  are  closely  mixed, 
and  be  careful  that  in  rooting  out  the  one  you  do  not  tear  up  the  other.  It 
is  a  proclamation  to 

"Poor  the  sweet  milk  of  concord  into  hell, 
Uproar  the  universal  peace,  confound 
All  unity  on  earth." 

The  confiscation  acts  of  last  session  had  .already  taken  away  all  the  property  of 
rebels.  All  it  needed,  at  least,  was  to  be  enforced  ;  and,  therefore,  all  that  is  left 
for  the  proclamation  to  effect  is  to  take  away  the  property  of  Union  men.  To  my 
mind  it  is  not  the  value  of  the  property  thus  destroyed  that  is  most  objectionable; 
it  is  the  principle,  or  the  violation  of  principle,  involved  My  own  opinion  is,  the 
rebels  have  committed  the  act  of  bankruptcy  in  regard  to  that  species  of  property, 
and  have  made  it  very  doubtful  whether  the  assets  will  pay  the  costs  of  a  settle- 
ment under  a  commission  from  any  Government.  If  gentlemen  could  have  been. 
in  Kentucky  to  see  the  gloom  on  the  faces  of  Union  men,  caused  by  this-procla- 
mation,  and  the  delight  that  beamed  from  the  faces  of  rebels  when  that  edict  went 
forth,  they  would  enterain  different  views  of  it  as  a  war  measure.  And  why  did 
it  cause  these  different  emotions  in  the  two  classes  of  our  people?  Because 
one  saw  and  felt  it  as  the  greatest,  blow  against  the  Union,  and  the  other  saw  it 
was  an  engine  of  inexorable  logic  in  their  hands. 

MY   OWN   POSITION. 

For  myself,  I  have  no  difficulty  in  concluding  that  the  Government  of  the 
whole  Union,  with  all  its  power,  and  all  its  guarantees,  is  worth  more  to  me  and 
my  po'sterity  and  to  the  whole  country  than  the  institution  of  African  slavery. 
Therefore,  if  I  had  to  sacrifice  one  to  save  the  other,  I  would  crucify  slavery,  and 
save  the  Government.  In  other  words,  if  by  the  force  of  anything  chargeable  to 
slavery,  Ihad  to  choose  between  them  as  between  two  things  of  different  value — 
if  I  had  to  take  the  Government  without  slavery  or  slavery  without  the  Govern- 
ment— I  would  say  of  slavery,  as  some  gentlemen  long  ago  said  of  the  Union  on 
this  floor,  "  let  it  slide." 

But  at  this  point  we  differ  with  the  radicals.  I  deny  that  in  any  possible  con- 
tingency can  the  destruction,  by  the  Government,  of  the  institution  in  the  States 
become  either  a  necessary,  a  wise,  or  a  conducive  measure  in  preserving  the 
Government.  I  go  further:  I  affirm  that  any  such  destruction  is,  pro  tanto,  a 
destruction  of  the  Government,  or  such  a  revolution  in  its  principles  as  that  it 
does  not  remain  the  same;  because  the  Constitution  not  only 'recognizes  property 


24 

in  slaves  buf  provides  for  the  security  of  the  master's  interest  in  the  labor  of  his 
slave,  and  makes  it  the  duty  of  the  President  to  take  care  that  the  laws  be  exe- 
cuted. I  deny  the  necessity  and  the  fitness  of  the  measure,  because  I  deny  the 
incompatibility  between  the  two  systems  of  labor.  I  deny  that  the  slave  system 
was  the  cause  of  the  rebellion,  and  affirm  that  if  it  were,  its  destruction  would  not 
be  a  legitimate  mode  of  warfare,  as  recognized  by  the  laws  of  nations ;  and  deny- 
ing that  such  destruction  can  in  any  event  he  a  political  or  a  military  necessity,  or 
a  constitutional  measure,  I  can  in  no  event  be  in  favor  of  such  a  scheme  as  the 
President's  proclamation  embraces.  In  this  statement  of  my  own  views  I  have 
purposely  used  the  word  Government  instead  of  the  word  Union.  It  means  more: 
it  is  the  Government;  the  Constitution,  that  makes  the  Union.  There  can  be  no 
good  Government  with  secession  recognized  and  accepted  as  a  principle  of  politi- 
cal science.  And  there  can  be  no  Union  but  the  unity  of  despotism,  or  a  Union 
for  bloody  vengeance,  under  the  principles  of  the  proclamation.  Nor  would  I 
ever  surrender  to  the  rebellion,  based  as  it  is  upon  secession.  If  I  am  told  that 
such  an  effort,  so  great  a  war  as  will  be  required  to  reinstate  and  enforce  the  Con- 
stitution and  laws  all  over  the  States  and  Territories  of  the  Union,  would  exhaust 
the  national  vitality  and  the  resources  of  both  parties,  I  reply  that  neither  party 
will  allow  it  to  come  to  that.  The  exhaustion  of  war  restores  the  reason  and  cools 
the  passions  of  belligerents,  and  generally  results  in  an  accommodation  that  has 
more  of  the  name  than  the  essence  of  a  compromise — some  platitude  that  is 
soothing  to  the  feelings.  But  if  it  must  be  otherwise,  then  let  it  be.  Nations  in 
their  dangers  and  duties  are  very  much  like  men.  A  nation  had  better  die  by 
fighting  than  die  by  rotting ;  and  a  man  had  better  risk  breaking  his  neck  in  the 
attempt  to  extinguish  the  flames  that  consume  his  dwelling  than  to  lie  supinely 
down  and  be  consumed  in  the  conflagration. 

EMANCIPATION  AND  COLONIZATION. 

To  return  to  the  subject  of  emancipation  as  proposed  by  the  President.  No 
clear  solution  of  it  has  been  offered.  Emancipate  four  millions  of  rude,  uncultivated 
people,  who,  while  slaves,  labor  successfully  only  under  the  direction  of  masters 
who  understand  them,  and  labor  scarcely  at  ail  as  freemen,  and  then  only  under 
the  compulsion  of  want,  and  what  will  you  do  with  them?  What  have  you 
done  for  them  ?  What  have  you  done  for  their  white  neighbors  ?  We  are  told 
they  shall  be  colonized.  Where  will  you  put  them,  a  larger  population  than  the 
thirteen  colonies  contained  at  the  Revolution  ?  You  have  no  vacant  territory  for 
them  that  they  could  subsist  in,  none  at  least  which  the  white  race  from  any  sec- 
tion would  allow  them  to  possess  for  two  generations.  What  other  nation  is  going 
to  surrender  its  territory  for  such  a  use,  or  allow  its  own  population  to  be  sub- 
merged by  an  inundation  from  such  a  black  sea?  You  talk  about  Central  America 
and  South  America  as  if  they  were  already  yours,  and  you  were  governing  them 
as  territories  or  colonies.  What  diplomatist  have  we  who  could  successfully  con- 
duct a  negotiation  with  any  foreign  Power  for  territory,  and  answer  the  retort  that 
we  were  seeking  to  thrust  upon  them  a  population  we  would  not  keep  among  our- 
selves? What  will  the  expense  be?  Count  the  cost  of  purchasing  them  a  coun- 
try, the  cost  of  compensating  loyal  owners,  the  cost  of  transportation,  and  of  sup- 
port on  the  voyage  and  for  several  months  alter  they  have  landed  on  the  shore  to 
vrhich  you  have  exiled  them,  (which  is  a  necessity  in  the  scheme,)  and  put  it  in  all 


25 

at  only  $250  per  head,  and  you  have  the  sum  of  $1,000,000,000  for  that.  Add 
to  this  the  cost  of  the  war,  which  will  not  fall  short  of  $2,000,000,000,  if  just 
claims  are  all  settled,  and  stolen  sums  all  counted,  and  we  have  the  enormous  sum 
of  $3,000,000,000,  or  about  one  hundred  dollars  to  every  white  man,  woman,  and 
child  in  the  country.  The  farmer  of  small  means,  wjio,  with  himself,  wife,  and 
children,  counts  ten  in  family,  would  shoulder  and  pay  $1,000  of  it,  or  pay  $60  per 
year  all  his  life  for  the  interest  on  it.  And  all  for  wtyat?  To  pay  for  the  Sunday 
rhetoric  of  a  horde  of  canting,  white-cravated  divines,  who  know  nothing  of 
slavery  and  less  of  religion ;  who  thought  they  were  called  to  preach  Christ  and 
him  crucified,  but  have  shown  it  was  only  to  scream  the  negro  and  him  eman- 
cipated. Would  not  that  $60  be  better  spent  on  that  manly  little  boy  whose  first 
impressions  are  that  life  is  a  prolonged  struggle  with  adversity  and  taxes,  and  that 
Government  is  but  a  machine  for  extortion — thus  preparing  in  the  child  a  man  for 
treason,  strategy,  and  spoils !  Would  it  not  be  grateful  to  that  thoughtful  or  melan- 
choly mother  to  spend  that  $60  a  year,  or  a  fourth  part  of  it,  in  educating  her  sun- 
browned  little  girl,  who  is  every  week  robbed  of  fourteen  hours  of  balmy  sleep  or  joy- 
ous play  in  order  to  prepare  the  flax,  the  wool,  or  the  cotton  for  the  family  clothing? 
The  scheme  of  the  proclamation  and  the  message  are  alike  impracticable ;  and,  if 
they  were  practicable,  the  people  of  this  country,  either  North  or  South,  are  not 
going  to  tax  themselves  to  pay  the  interest  on  such  an  enormous  debt  contracted  in 
the  perpetration  of  so  enormous  a  folly.  Aye,  sir,  for  more  than  folly — for  the  ex- 
termination, gradual  though  it  be,  of  a  whole  race  of  people.  For  I  again  ask, 
what  will  you  do  with  them  ?  Will  you  send  them  North,  or  even  allow  them  to 
go  there?  If  you  do,  they  will  be  incontinently  driven  out  by  your  outraged  con 
stituents.  I  call  as  witnesses  the  laws  and  constitutions  of  many  Northern  States 
on  that  subject,  as  well  as  the  acknowledged  aversion  to  dwelling  with  them,  so- 
cially or  politically,  on  terms  of  equality.  Should  they  be  allowed  to  go  and 
remain  there  they  would  soon  become  a  marked  and  an  outcast  people.  They 
cannot  become  the  owners  of  your  soil  or  the  schoolmates  of  your  children  until 
your  tastes  are  changed,  although  some  fools  would  have  them  to  become  members 
of  your  families,  and  to  perpetuate  at  once  your  politics  and  your  blood.  They 
would  not  be  admitted  as  witnesses  to  prove  acts  of  oppression  against  them  by 
those  bad  white  men  who  always  seek  to  speculate  or  presume  on  the  misfortunes 
of  others.  They  would  become  your  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water ;  they 
would  be  your  slaves  practically,  though  not  in  name — a  slavery  with  most  of  its 
hardships  and  none  of  its  kindlier  features,  for  it  would  not  be  your  interest,  as  it 
is  with  us,  and  you  would  not  be  bound  by  law,  as  we  are,  to  visit  them  when 
they  are  sick,  feed  them  when  they  are  hungry,  and  clothe  them  when  they  are 
naked.  They  would  either  become  vagabond  strollers  from  house  to  house,  as 
hunger  and  cold  pinched  them,  or  by  the  repulsion  of  social  tastes,  and  the  jealousy, 
if  not  the  interests,  of  your  intelligent  free  white  laborers,  become  crowded  into 
gquallid  settlements  of  their  own,  and,  in  either  event,  would  become  rapidly  ex- 
tinct. You  will  thus  have  become  the  exterminators  of  a  race  you  would  have 
freed  and  made  equal  to  their  masters.  If  they  cannot  be  transported,  and  if  you 
will  not  receive  them  into  your  own  arms,  what  else  will  be  done  with  them? 
Shall  they  be  left  in  the  country  where  they  were  emancipated,  with  their  untamed 
passions,  made  fiercer  by  sudden  liberty,  brought  in  contact  with  the  prejudices, the 
outraged  feelings,  the  violated  rights,  and  the  natural  and  educated  feeling  of  su- 
periority of  their  late  masters?  Would  the  true  friends  of  either  race  desire  this? 


26 


WAR   OF   RACES. 

In  that  condition,  one  of  two  things  would  overtake  them;  either  they  will 
silently  and  gradually  resume  their  places  under  their  masters,  when  the  labor  of 
your  love  shall  have  been  lost;  or  else,  what,  is  far  more  probable,  it  will  result  in 
a  war  of  races  between  the  two  populations.  In  this  event,  do  not  flatter  your- 
selves that  tne  hatred  and  the  thirst  fur  vengeance,  which  some  of  you  feel,  would  be 
gratified  in  the  success  of  the  negro.  In  any  armed  contest  between  him  and  the 
white  man,  the  negro  will  go  under  and  out  of  sight — and  then,  what  would  the 
two  factions  have  to  agitate?  Having  agitated  the  country  asunder,  and  agitated 
the  negro  out  of  existence,  and  proclaimed  away  the  liberties  of.the  people  of  both, 
sections,  (for  Mr.  Davis  issues  proclamations  as  well. as  our  own  President,^  it  is  to 
be  .hoped  they  would  rest  for  a  season. 

But  suppose  a  different  result.  Suppose  the  black  insurrection,  aided  by  the 
Army  and  Navy  of  the  United  States,  should  prove  a  success.  You  know  very 
well  that  the  late>  master  and  the  newly  made  free  negro  will  not  Jive  together. 
Between  violence  and  emigration,  the  white  man  would  disappear  from  a  large 
skirt  of  country  on  the  Gulf,  and  we  would  have  a  neighboring  black  republic, 
or  a  number  of  colonies  very  difficult  to  govern.  And  then  what  ?  .  Do  you  not 
know,  does  not  all  history  teach,  that  as  he  remains  indolent,  or  becomes  predatory 
in  his  habits,  and  as  your  children  become  crowded  for  .room,  the  descendants  of 
the  conquerors  of  Philip  would  find  no  difficulty  in  concluding  that  the  black  man 
had  no  more  right  to  the  savannahs  of.the  South  than  the  red  man  had  to  the  hills 
and  valleys  of  New  England  ?  If  you  do  not  know  this,  you  have  not  analyzed 
the  blood  or  studied  the  history  of  our  race.  Why  is.it  that  tne  Northern  man  going 
South  makes  the  most  rigid  taskmaster?  Not  because  he  is  a  meaner  man,  but 
because  he  does  not  understand  the  negro,  and  therefore  does  not  sympathise  with 
him  as  the  Southern  man  does.  Then  view  this  gigantic  scheme  of  the  President 
as  we  will,  and  its  results  are  only  evil  to  the  white  man  and  destruction  to  the 
black  man. 

There  is  this  difference  between  me  and  the  advocates  of  violent  emancipation  : 
.they  hate  slaveholders  more  than  they  do  th.e  Evil  One,  and  love  their  philosophy 
more  than  they  do  the  providences  of  God.  I  hate  robbery,  murder,  arson,  rape, 
.and  infanticide,- more  than  I  would  hate  slavery  were  I  myself  the  slave;  and  I 
love  the  providences  of  God  more  than  I  love  that  system  of  servitude  He  has  per- 
mitted in  that  country  where  He  has  cast  my  lot.  I  have  more  confidence  in  His 
wisdom,  His  day,  and  His  mode,  than  I  have  in  abolition  platitudes.  The. control 
of  in-dividuals  is  with  Government.  But  I  believe  the  location  and  disposition,  the 
destiny,  the  increase  or  demise  of  whole  races,  are  things  above  the  reach  of 
finite  wisdom,  and  only  in  that  of  the  Infinite  One.  I  therefore  refer  this  thing 
to  His  hands,  seeing  and  feeling  it  is  too  large  for  my  mind. 

Mr.  Chairman,  how  is  this  proclamation  to  be  enforced  without  the  assistance  of 
the  negro,  and  what  kind  of  assistance  will  he  render  ?  The  scene  would  attract 
the  pencil  of  genius,  did  it  not  freeze  and  repel  the  affections  of  humanity.  In 
the  foreground  stands  the  President  of  the  United  States,  the  Commander-in-Chief ' 
of  the  Army  and  Navy,  sword  in  hand,  bearing  full  high  on  its  flaming  point  the 
proclamation. of  freedom  to  a  whole  race,  who  can  only  read  it  as  an  invitation  to 


27 

insurrection  and  servile  war.  The  body  of  the  canvas  is  filled  with  an  innumera- 
ble host  of  these  beings,  intoxicated  with  blood  and  bloody  instructions,  flourish- 
ing the  torch,  the  axe,  the  knife,  with  ruin  leaping  from  their  eyes,  and  lust 
hanging  upon  their  lips.  In  the  midst,  in  painful  relief,  are  seen  the  flames  of  a 
burning  home,  illumining  and  making  more  ghastly  a  scene  which  the  shades  of 
night  had  vainly  offered  to  screen  from  the  view  of  man  and  of  God.  In  the 
garden  lies  hidden  a  murder-stricken  child  clinging  to  an  outraged  mother,  and 
pleading  for  that  protection  which  an  absent  father  and  brother  alone  could  give. 
Others  are  dimly  seen  fleeing  and  crouching  in  the  swamps  and  the  brakes  which 
kindly  ofier  them  a  place  to  starve,  to  sicken,  and  to  die.  It  is  to  those  who,  in 
the  language  of  a  great  judge,  "  from  their  tender  years  or  other  disability  cannot 
be  loyal  or  otherwise,"  that  this  proclamation  says: 

'*But  if  you  frown  upon  this  proffered  peace, 
You  tempt  the  fury  of  my  three  attendants, 
Lean  famine  quartering  steel,  and  climbing  fire." 

In  the  background  are  seen  a  vast  army  of  men  clad  in  the  habiliments  and  the 
armor  of  United  States  soldiers,  with  the  blushing  banner  of  their  former  renown 
drooping  above  them,  a  vast  and  noble  navy  riding  at  anchor  hard- by,  and  all  with 
orders  not  to  resist  but  to  aid  in  this  horrid  tragedy.  The  picture  grows  too  dark- 
nay,  too  red,  red  with  the  flames  of  incendiarism  and  the  blood  of  assassination^- 
to  be  looked  upon  with  any  other  emotion  than  that  of  deep  and  profound  and  un- 
utterable horror. 

Sir,  it  had  as  well  be  known  now,  it  had  as  well  be  stated  plainly,  and  it  were 
well  for  all  concerned  if  the  powers  that  be  would  believe  it,  that  the  country  does 
not  internl  to  submit  to  these  things.  I  do  not  mean  only  that  the  loyal  men  of 
loyal  slave  States  are  objecting — I  mean  what  I  said,  THE  PEOPLE  ;  and  the  late 
elections  justify  me  in  the  breadth  of  the  language.  Neither  am  I  flinging  off  a 
cheap  edition  of  that  stereotyped,  ill-natured,  and  imprudent,  not  to  say  low  bred 
threat  of  secession,  that  has  so  often  been  flung  into  the  faces  of  gentlemen  on  this 
floor.  Whatever  else  we  may  do  or  be  driven  to  by  your  folly,  we  do  not  intend 
to  secede.  Some  of  you  try  to  goad  us  into  secession.  We  will  not  please  you 
SQ  much.  We  will  have  no  such  government  as  the  Southern  Confederacy,  based 
as  it  is  upon  the  principle  of  licensed  disobedience  of  law  and  the  voluntary  dis- 
integration of  empire,  No,  sir;  we  can  do  better.  THIS  GOVERNMENT  is  our 
Government  as  well  as  yours,  and  we  mean  to  have  and  to  demand  all  our  rights 
under  it.  In  making  this  demand  we  will  appeal  to  the  great  conservative  party 
of  the  North,  and  they  will  come  to  the  rescue.  The  victory  promises  to  be  a 
bloodless  one.  They  will  beat  you  .at  your  own  homes.  The  decree  has  gone 
forth  that  the  Constitution  must  and  shall  be  saved  from  all  its  enemies,  among 
whom  I  class  many  of  the  friends  of  the  proclamation,  who  are  friendly  to  their 
country,  but  with  more  zeal  than  knowledge.  We  desire,  aye.  sir,  we  are  deter- 
mined that  the  rebellion  shall  be  suppressed,  but  we  a're  equally  determined  that 
our  own  liberties  shalL  not  be  suppressed  with  it. 


28 


THE  HOPE  OF  THE  COUNTRY. 

Mr.  Chairman,  my  yet  young  heart  longs  for  the  glorious  Republic  of  my  boy- 
hood's affections,  that  glorious  "  no  North,  no  South,  no  East,  no  West "  of  but 
a  few  years  ago;  those  better  days  of  better  construction  of  better  feeling,  and  of 
loftier  eloquence.  What  is  now  the  hope  of  this  country?  Assailed  on  one  side 
by  higher-law-ism  and  war-power-ism;  assailed  on  the  other  by  secession,  perjury, 
treason  of  the  foulest  dye;  the  Constitution  defied  and  contemned  by  a  powerful 
insurrection,  and  the  same  Constitution  being  cast  aside  or  avowedly  disregarded 
by  a  dominant  party,  as  being  insufficient  for  the  work  of  its  own  preservation; 
what,  I  ask  is  our  hope  ?  On  one  side  is  the  spirit  of  dissolution,  a  political  struma 
that  would  soon  slough  away  the  vitals  as  well  as  the  territory  of  any  republic  in 
which  it  is  adopted  as  a  legal  right,  or  received  as  a  truthful  principle  in  politics. 
There  is  no  hope  in  that  direction.  On  the  other  we  have  acts,  assumptions, 
measures,  that  Jack  only  the  name  to  make  the  Government  an  unlimited  depotism. 
There  is  no  hope  in  that  direction.  Then  where  is  the  hope  of  the  country? 
Sir,  it  is  in  that  great  middle  conservative  party  that  will  resist,  and  is  here  to-day 
to  resist  both  /xtremes,  both  heresies,  both  rebellions  against  the  Constitution. 
And  I  thank  the  fates  that  rule  us  that  this  element  is  stronger  in  the  country,  and 
will  be  stronger  in  the  next  Congress  than  it  is  to-day,  in  this  Hall. 

If  I  am  told  this  is  too  much  to  be  undertaken  in  the  present  conjuncture,  and 
that  the  elements  of  rebellion  and  higher  law  being  practically  in  co-operation, 
though  seemingly  opposed,  make  a  power  for  aggression  too  great  to  be  resisted 
by  the  conservative  element,  I  have  only  to  respond,  be  it  so.  If  so  great  madness 
has  overtaken  the  country,  let  us  find  it  out.  It  is  said  to  precede  destruction. 
Let  us  make  an  honest  and  a  brave  effort  to  save  the  country ;  and  if,  making  it, 
we  go  down,  the  Constitution — mark  my  words — the  Constitution  and  the  liberties 
of  the  country  go  down  with  us.  The  great  problem  will  have  been  solved — the 
great  experiment  will  have  proved  a  failure — and  the  people,  who  will  have  failed 
to  govern  themselves,  will  then  deserve  to  be  governed  by  a  master.  In  this  great 
upheaval,  this  commingling  of  tempest  and  earthquake,  we  have  selected  our 
chart.  It  is  simple  and  truthful.  The  polar  star  that  guides  us  on  our  way  is  the 
UNION  OFF  ALL  THE  STATES,  and  the  solar  sun  that  lights  us  on  that  way  is  the 
CONSTITUTION  that  makes  that  Union — the  great  center  around  which  they  cluster 
and  upon  which  they  hang.  If  on  this  strong  and  simple  platform,  including  the 
provision  for  amendments,  we  cannot  ride  the  storm,  then  the  fates  are  against  us; 
and  when  we  go  down,  we  will  have  one  only  consolation — if  such  it  may  be 
called — that,  though  secessionists  and  traitors,  fanatics  and  higher  law  men  have 
triumphed  over  the  Constitution  and  the  liberties  of  their  country,  they  will  also 
have  reaped  the  reward  of  their  o"\pn  folly,  for  they,  in  turn,  will  be  speedily  and 
bitterly  crushed  under  the  ruins  of  that  great  temple  whose  pillars  they  under- 
mined and  pulled  down.  I  have  another  hope.  It  is  in  a  return  to  reason,  good 
promises,  and  the  Constitution.  Any  man  may  cling  to  an  error;  a  brave  man 
becomes  braver,  a  generous  man  more  generous,  in  renouncing  it. 


29 


THE    DANGER. 

These  people  both  North  and  South,  though  more  at  the  South  than  the  North, 
are  threatened  with  a  danger  which  many  of  them  do  not  suspect.  They  may  yet 
fulfill  a  great  historical  rule.  I  believe  it  was  Washington  who  said  there  was  a 
natural  progression  from  liberty  abused  to  licentiousness  into  anarchy,  and  from 
anarchy  into  despotism.  There  are  volumes  of  history  and  political  philosophy 
compressed  into  that  observation.  There  is  a  limit  to  the  endurance  of  human 
nature.  When  a  people  have  become  wearied,  war  worn,  disgusted;  when  their 
sub>tance  is  consumed,  and  the  weeds  and  the  bramble  have  conquered  the  garden, 
the  lirld.  and  the  orchard;  when  the  voice  of  the  little  ones  is  heard  crying  for 
bread,  and  mothers  that  weep,  refusing  to  be  comforted,  because  their  children  are 
not:  when  the  iron  of  war  has  pierced  the  hearts  of  the  strong  men,  and  their  stout 
spirits  are  broken,  there  is  always  a  murmur  heard  abroad  in  the  land  which  a 
grasping  genius  is  quick  to  detect  and  improve.  It  is,  "give  us  any  government 
rather  than  none ;  give  us  peace  on  any  terms  ;  give  us  the  protection  of  a  master 
rather  than  the  fury  of  a  mob  "  A  Protector  offers  himself  with  an  army  of  reck- 
less, hungry  soldiers  at  his  back.  How  winning  the  name !  But  it  has  always 
lacked  only  another  name  to  make  him  a  monarch  or  a  despot,  and  the  people  have 
scarcely  surrendered  before  the  name,  the  crown,  the  power,  are  all  assumed. 

MR.    CRITTENDEN. 

Mr.  Chairman,  the  presence  here  of  my  venerable  colleague,  who  sits  before  me, 
ought  to  admonish  us.  Here  he  lingers,  the  contemporary  and  the  compeer  of  the 
great  Commoner,  who  would  "rather  be  right  than  be  President;  "  the  great  Ex- 
pounder, from  whose  teachings  I  learned  to  condemn  this  rebellion  on  principle; 
the  Iron  Will  of  the  Hermitage;  the  Old  Man  Eloquent;  and  that  historical  Sen- 
ator who  for  thirty  years  illustrated  the  debates  in  the  other  end  of  the  Capitol  with 
facts.  Here  he  stands,  one  of  the  few  yet  unbroken  links  between  the  calam- 
ities of  the  present  and  the  glories  of  the  past,  raising  his  voice  ever  and  anon,  and 
pleading  earnestly,  with  great  arguments,  for  the  Constitution :  with  one  arm 
entwined  around  his  bleeding  storm-tossed  country,  and  the  other  around  the 
mausoleum  of  the  great  dead,  as  if  he  would  anchor  the  one  to  the  memories  of 
the  other.  Will  I  excite  a  sneer  from  the  disciples  of  higher  law  by  invoking 
for  my  country  the  blessings  of  those  memories,  and  pleading  with  them  to  hearken 
to  the  lessons  of  law  and  order,  of  patriotism  and  eloquence,  that  come  to  us 
from  the  tombs  of  those  who,  dead,  yet  speaketh  ? 

A    SUMMARY. 

Mr*  Chairman,  I  have  not  protested  against  this  proclamation  from  any  sympa- 
thy I  have  for  armed  men  in  rebellion  against  their  Government.  For  them,  and 
with  their  cause,  I  have  no  sympathy.  I  have  often  doubted  whether  I  would 
trust  myself  to  do  them  simple  justice.  "Without  forgetting  that  it  does  not  in 
terms  apply  to  my  own  State,  I  do  yet,  with  all  the  earnestness  of  an  earnest  na- 
ture, protest,  against  it,  for  myself  and  my  children,  for  my  State  and  for  the  whole 
country.  I  protest  against  it  for  the  women  and  minors,  the  aged  and  the  infirm, 
and  for  the  loyal  people  of  the  rebel  States.  Guided  by  the  example  of  divine  cle- 
mency that  spared  a  wicked  city,  there -is  yet  enough  righteousness  left  in  the  rebel 


30 

States  to  save  them  from  the  destroying  angel  who  is  to  execute  this  proclamation. 
I  protest  against  it  as  a  violation  of  the  Constitution  and  the  liberties  of  my  country. 
I  protest  against  it  as  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  humanity,  the  laws  of  nations,  and 
the  usages  of  civilized  warfare.  I  protest  against  it  as  unwise,  uncalled  for,  tend- 
ing to  widen  the  breach  rather  than  to  hasten  the  conclusion  of  this  war.  I  pro- 
test against  it  as  being  in  the  highest  degree  offensive  to  those  great  European  anti- 
slavery  Powers  with  whom  it  is  as  much  our  duty  as  our  interest  to  be  on  good 
terms,  when  those  terms  are  consistent  with  our  own  honor.  I  protest  against  it 
as  being,  not  on  the  part  of  the  President,  but  of  those  who  have  urged  him  to  it, 
malicious,  revengeful,  and  blood  thirsty,  and  therefore  not  suited  to  the  tastes  and 
purposes  of  heroic  enemies  and  generous  soldiers.  I  protest  against  it  as  being  as 
much  a  sin  against  the  religion  of  Christ  as  it  is  an  offence  to  the  moral  sentiment 
of  mankind.  And  above  all,  I  protest  against  it  as  being  the  CAUSE  to  which  the 
friends  and  leaders  of  the  rebellion  may  and  will  attribute  their  ultimate  success, 
if  ever  a  calamity  so  unmeasured  overtakes  the  fortunes  of  the  republic. 


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